Abstract
Why should not old men be mad? Some have known a likely lad That had a sound fly-fisher’s wrist Turn to a drunken journalist; A girl that knew all Dante once Live to bear children to a dunce; A Helen of social welfare dream, Climb on a wagonette to scream. Some think it a matter of course that chance Should starve good men and bad advance, That if their neighbours figured plain, As though upon a lighted screen, No single story would they find Of an unbroken happy mind, A finish worthy of the start. Young men know nothing of this sort, Observant old men know it well; And when they know what old books tell, And that no better can be had, Know why an old man should be mad.
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© 1989 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Jeffares, A.N. (1989). [Poems from ‘On the Boiler’]. In: Jeffares, A.N. (eds) Yeats’s Poems. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20284-3_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20284-3_17
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-51061-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20284-3
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