“Never Give All the Heart”, William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats’ poem “Never Give All the Heart” was published in his 1906 collection “Poems, 1899–1905”. The book was a reprint of “In the Seven Woods” from 1903, with the addition of two poems, this one and “Old Memory”.

William Butler Yeats was born on 13 June 1865 in Sandymount, Ireland, and he died on 28 January 1939 in Menton, France, at the age of 73.

A poet, dramatist, and writer, Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish literary establishment who helped to found the Abbey Theatre. In his later years he served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

Text of the poem:

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.