When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
W.B. Yeats, from The Rose (1893)
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Hey man!
That is the first poem that ever brought tears to my eyes (about 40 years ago when I was thumbing through an old book in a museum where I worked).
Glad to see that someone else finds it worthy of note.
By the way, if you like listening to poetry on records or tapes, the best I have ever heard, bar none, was the Caedmon reording of Yeats' poetry read by Cyril Cusack and Siobhan McKenna. Helps one to appreciate what a master of words Yeats really was.