All Things Can Tempt Me

by William Butler Yeats — a poem card from Justes Mots

The speaker laments how various temptations—a woman's face, social obligations—have repeatedly drawn him away from poetry. Now in age, paradoxically, poetry itself has become the distraction he once longed to escape. The poem offers wry reflection on the shifting priorities of youth versus maturity and the artist's perpetual struggle with creative discipline.

All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
One time it was a woman's face, or worse,
The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
Than this accustomed toil. When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet sing it with such airs
That one believed he had a sword upstairs;…

Themes: love · new-baby · wedding · friendship