W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
Never Give All The Heart http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1545/ <br class="br">In The Seven Woods (1904) <br class="br">Context: Never give all the heart, for love<br>Will hardly seem worth thinking of<br>To passionate women if it seem<br>Certain, and they never dream<br>That it fades out from kiss to kiss;<br>For everything that's lovely is<br>but a brief, dreamy, kind of delight.<br>O never give the heart outright,<br>For they, for all smooth lips can say,<br>Have given their hearts up to the play.<br>And who could play it well enough<br>If deaf and dumb and blind with love?<br>He that made this knows all the cost,<br>For he gave all his heart and lost.