Memory
One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.
W. B. Yeats
One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.
Yeats’s short lyric turns on a quiet, almost resigned realization. The speaker recalls that one person had a lovely face, and two or three others had charm, yet none of their appeal mattered.
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