When I was one-and-twenty
 I heard him say again,
“The heart out of the bosom
 Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
 And sold for endless rue.” 
And I am two-and-twenty,
 And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

XIV

There pass the careless people
 That call their souls their own: 
Here by the road I loiter,
 How idle and alone.

Ah, past the plunge of plummet,
 In seas I cannot sound,
My heart and soul and senses,
 World without end, are drowned.

His folly has not fellow
 Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
 His heart and soul away.

There flowers no balm to sain him
 From east of earth to west
That’s lost for everlasting
 The heart out of his breast.

Here by the labouring highway
 With empty hands I stroll: 
Sea-deep, till doomsday morning,
 Lie lost my heart and soul.

XV

Look not in my eyes, for fear
 They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
 And love it and be lost like me. 
One the long nights through must lie
 Spent in star-defeated sighs,
But why should you as well as I
 Perish? gaze not in my eyes.

A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
 One that many loved in vain,
Looked into a forest well
 And never looked away again. 
There, when the turf in springtime flowers,
 With downward eye and gazes sad,
Stands amid the glancing showers
 A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.

XVI

It nods and curtseys and recovers
 When the wind blows above,
The nettle on the graves of lovers
 That hanged themselves for love.

The nettle nods, the wind blows over,
 The man, he does not move,
The lover of the grave, the lover
 That hanged himself for love.

XVII

Twice a week the winter thorough
 Here stood I to keep the goal: 
Football then was fighting sorrow
 For the young man’s soul.

Now in May time to the wicket
 Out I march with bat and pad: 
See the son of grief at cricket
 Trying to be glad.

Try I will; no harm in trying: 
 Wonder ’tis how little mirth
Keeps the bones of man from lying
 On the bed of earth.

XVIII

Oh, when I was in love with you,
 Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
 How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by,
 And nothing will remain,
And miles around they’ll say that I
 Am quite myself again.

XIX

TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG