My dear, my dear, I know More than another What makes your heart beat so; Not even your own mother Can know it as I know, Who broke my heart for her When the wild thought, That she denies And has forgot, Set all her blood astir And glittered in her eyes.
Yeats’s speaker tells a young girl that he understands her racing heart more deeply than anyone else—even more than her own mother. The reason lies in his past: he loved the girl’s mother, and he remembers the “wild thought” that once set the older woman’s blood astir and made her eyes glitter.
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