The Dancer
Dedicated to Loreene
____________________________

My youngest child. Remember the charm and never regret your days of dancing. It was a gift from God.

TO A CHILD DANCING IN THE WIND Dance there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water’s roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool’s triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best laborer dead And all the sheaves to bind. What need have you to dread The monstrous crying of the wind? Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn’d? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned, I could have warned you, but you are young, So we speak a different tongue. You will take whatever’s offered And dream that all the world’s a friend, Suffer as your mother suffered, Be as broken in the end. But I am old and you are young, And I speak a barbarous tongue. W.B. Yeats Next Page Pangur Ban Return to Contents Page