Brown Penny

(The Bridle Path, White Mountains, New Hampshire,
1868 by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910, American artist)

There’s no love without taking a chance.

BROWN PENNY

I whispered, “I am too young,”
And then, “I am old enough”;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
“Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.”
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
’Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

~ William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet and dramatist and winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature