Select Search World Factbook Roget's Int'l Thesaurus Bartlett's Quotations Respectfully Quoted Fowler's King's English Strunk's Style Mencken's Language Cambridge History The King James Bible Oxford Shakespeare Gray's Anatomy Farmer's Cookbook Post's Etiquette Brewer's Phrase & Fable Bulfinch's Mythology Frazer's Golden Bough All Verse Anthologies Dickinson, E. Eliot, T.S. Frost, R. Hopkins, G.M. Keats, J. Lawrence, D.H. Masters, E.L. Sandburg, C. Sassoon, S. Whitman, W. Wordsworth, W. Yeats, W.B. All Nonfiction Harvard Classics American Essays Einstein's Relativity Grant, U.S. Roosevelt, T. Wells's History Presidential Inaugurals All Fiction Shelf of Fiction Ghost Stories Short Stories Shaw, G.B. Stein, G. Stevenson, R.L. Wells, H.G. Verse > W.B. Yeats > Responsibilities and Other Poems   PREVIOUS NEXT   CONTENTS      BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD W.B. Yeats (1865–1939).  Responsibilities and Other Poems.  1916. 48. At the Abbey Theatre (Imitated from Ronsard) DEAR Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case.   When we are high and airy hundreds say   That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place,   While those same hundreds mock another day   Because we have made our art of common things,          5 So bitterly, you’d dream they longed to look   All their lives through into some drift of wings.   You’ve dandled them and fed them from the book   And know them to the bone; impart to us—   We’ll keep the secret—a new trick to please.   10 Is there a bridle for this Proteus   That turns and changes like his draughty seas?   Or is there none, most popular of men,   But when they mock us that we mock again?   CONTENTS      BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD   PREVIOUS NEXT     Shakespeare · Bible · Strunk · Anatomy · Nonfiction · Quotations · Reference · Fiction · Poetry © 1993–2015 Bartleby.com · [Top 150] · Subjects · Titles · Authors · World Lit.