I
Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or waters roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fools triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?
II
Has no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learnd?
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.
O you will take what evers offered
And dream that all the worlds 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.
To A Child Dancing In The Wind
William Butler Yeats
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