The Fascination of What's Difficult

The Fascination of What’s Difficult

By William Butler Yeats

The fascination of what's difficult

Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent   

Spontaneous joy and natural content

Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt   

That must, as if it had not holy blood   

Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,   

Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt

As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays   

That have to be set up in fifty ways,

On the day's war with every knave and dolt,   

Theatre business, management of men.   

I swear before the dawn comes round again   

I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)