“I heard the old, old men say,
'Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.”

— W.B. Yeats

The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1663/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Context: I heard the old, old men say,
'Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.'
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
'All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.

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W.B. Yeats 255

Irish poet and playwright 1865–1939

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