The poem
I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young And weep because I know all things now: I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough Among my leaves in times out of mind: I became a rush that horses tread: I became a man, a hater of the wind, Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head May not lie on the breast nor his lips on thc hair Of the woman that he loves, until he dies. O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air, Must I endure your amorous cries?
Upon inebriation, i urge you to read this poem. Yeats is right, what he says is timeless; he does "know all". We all do in such a state, and Yeat's status is elevated thus. The truth cannot be argued with. Insight or the perception of said noun, is virtuous and great.
I own a 1950 anthology that gives a different version of this poem. I can't tell if this is an earlier or later version. In this version the last two lines are:
Although the rushes and the fowl of the air
Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.
This ending is more affecting, I think, because it avoids complaint.