for Anne Gregory

never shall a young man

thrown into despair

by those great honey-coloured

ramparts at your ear,

love you for yourself alone

and not your yellow hair

but i can get a hair-dye

and set such colour there,

brown, or black, or carrot,

that young men in despair

may love me for myself alone

and not my yellow hair

i heard an old religious man

but yesternight declare

that he had found a text to prove

that only God, my dear,

could love you for yourself alone

and not your yellow hair

W.B Yeats