Answering a poetry request

I have been asked about the Yeats poem (possibly his most famous) that I mentioned the other day - so here it is (for those of you too lazy to look it up on Plagiarist!).

I have long been fan of Yeats. Once, in fact, I trekked up to Primrose Hill in North London to take photographs of a house that he used to live in, commemorated by one of the famous 'Blue Plaques' - not for myself, but for an American penpal, a guy I'd just happened to get chatting to over a game of pool in a bar in New Jersey a dozen or more years ago, discovering that Yeats was a passion we shared (an incident I recounted over on my brother-blog Barstool Blues a while back).

The Wild Swans At Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)