Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;
Wear out the carpet with their shoes
Earning respect; have no strange friend;
If they have sinned nobody knows.
Lord, what would they say
Should their Catullus walk that way?

Confirmed with Yeats, William Butler. The Wild Swans at Coole, New York: The Macmillan company, 1919. The first of two versions.

Text Authorship:

• by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), "The scholars", appears in The Wild Swans at Coole, first published 1919 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

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Set in a modified version by Joseph Eidson.

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Available translations, adaptations, and transliterations (if applicable):

• FRE French (Français) (Pierre Mathé) , title 1: "Les érudits", copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2014-01-10
Line count: 12
Word count: 72