New Poems (Yeats)/Imitated from the Japanese

by William Butler Yeats

A MOST astonishing thing—
Seventy years have I lived;

(Hurrah for the flowers of Spring,
For Spring is here again.)

Seventy years have I lived
No ragged beggar-man,
Seventy years have I lived,
Seventy years man and boy,
And never have I danced for joy.