An Acre of Grass
An acre of green grass
For air and exercise.
Now strength of body goes;
Midnight, an old house,
Where nothing stirs but a mouse.
My temptation is quiet
Here at life's end
Neither loose imagination,
Nor the mill of the mind
Consuming its rag and bone,
Can make the truth known.
Grant me an old man's frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till truth obeyed his call;
A mind Michael Angelo knew
That can pierce the clouds,
Or inspired by frenzy
Shake the dead in their shrouds;
Forgotten else by mankind
An old man's eagle mind.
- W.B. Yeats