W. B. Yeats

Imitated from the Japanese (1938)

A most astonishing thing
Seventy years have I lived;

(Hurrah for the flowers of Spring
For Spring is here again.)

Seventy years have I lived
No ragged beggar man,
Seventy years have I lived,
Seventy years man and boy,
And never have I danced for joy.

For notes about ‘Imitated from the Japanese’ see the Bibliography BL41a; for an overview of Yeats’s Japanese interests see W. B. Yeats, Certain Noble Plays, and Japan; for a note about Yeats titles in print see from The Dreaming of the Bones.