Poem by William Butler Yeats

At the Abbey Theatre

DEAR Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case.
When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things,
So bitterly, you'd dream they longed to look
All their lives through into some drift of wings.
You've dandled them and fed them from the book
And know them to the bone; impart to us --
We'll keep the secret -- a new trick to please.
Is there a bridle for this Proteus
That turns and changes like his draughty seas?
Or is there none, most popular of men,
But when they mock us, that we mock again?

1. The Dedication to a Book of Stories Selected from the Irish Novelists
2. To Ireland in the Coming Times
3. The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner
4. The Pity of Love
5. The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water

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