The Poetry Corner

At the Abbey Theatre

By William Butler Yeats

Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case. When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight theyll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things, So bitterly, youd dream they longed to look All their lives through into some drift of wings. Youve dandled them and fed them from the book And know them to the bone; impart to us, Well 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?