For some thirty years Dublin's William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) suffered an unrequited love for Irish beauty and nationalist, Maud Gonne (1866-1953). Sadly, for him, she was to marry another on 21 Feb 1903. In 1902, prior to her marriage to Major John McBride (1865-1916), Yeats wrote the lines to the first poem below, in which he rejects the idea of any comfort held out to him. His second poem was written following Gonne's marriage. THE FOLLY OF BEING COMFORTED One that is ever kind said yesterday; "Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey, And little shadows come about her eyes; Time can but make it easier to be wise Though now it seems impossible, and so All that you need is patience." Heart cries, "No, I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain. Time can but make her beauty over again: Because of that great nobleness of hers The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs, Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways When all the wild summer was in her gaze." O heart! Oh heart! if she'd but turn her head, You'd know the folly of being comforted. NEVER GIVE ALL THE HEART Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind of delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.