Topical Guide 714
Mark Dorset
Allusion
Projects, Difficult
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 33:
It wasn’t an easy trip for Grandfather. Often, along the way, he had doubts about the wisdom of having set out at all. Sometimes he wished that he could just end it, put into any port along the way, and sometimes he wished that he could start again—better prepared this time, better equipped. […] At other times, the effort of keeping up the pretense seemed too difficult for him.
William Butler Yeats, “The Fascination of What’s Difficult”:
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.
See also:
Allusion; Quotation TG 140, TG 455, TG 462, TG 502, TG 506, TG 532, TG 559, TG 583, TG 592, TG 626, TG 654, TG 657
Projects, Practical and Impractical TG 367, TG 569, TG 615; Ideal or Real TG 443
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