The Heart of the Spring by W.B. Yeats

A very old man, whose face was almost as fleshless as the foot of a / bird, sat meditating upon the rocky shore of the flat and hazel-covered / isle which fills the widest part of the Lough Gill. A russet-faced boy / of seventeen years sat by his side, watching the swallows dipping for / flies in the still water. The old man was dressed in threadbare blue / velvet, and the boy wore a frieze coat and a blue cap, and had about his / neck a rosary of blue beads. Behind the two, and half hidden by trees, / was a little monastery. It had been burned down a long while before by / sacrilegious men of the Queen's party, but had been roofed anew with / rushes by the boy, that the old man might find shelter in his last days. / He had not set his spade, however, into the garden about it, and the / lilies and the roses of the monks had spread out until their confused / luxuriancy met and mingled with the narrowing circle of the fern. Beyond / the lilies and the roses the ferns were so deep that a child walking / among them would be hidden from sight, even though he stood upon his / toes; and beyond the fern rose many hazels and small oak trees.

'Master,' said the boy, 'this long fasting, and the labour of beckoning / after nightfall with your rod of quicken wood to the beings who dwell / in the waters and among the hazels and oak-trees, is too much for your / strength. Rest from all this labour for a little, for your hand seemed / more heavy upon my shoulder and your feet less steady under you to-day / than I have known them. Men say that you are older than the eagles, / and yet you will not seek the rest that belongs to age. ' He spoke in an / eager, impulsive way, as though his heart were in the words and thoughts / of the moment; and the old man answered slowly and deliberately, as / though his heart were in distant days and distant deeds.