"The Song of the Old Mother" by W.B. Yeats (poetry reading)

"Old Woman Frying Eggs" was by Diego Rodriguez de Silva y VELÁZQUEZ, 1618

Yeats revised many early poems. Here is a slightly different version.

I RISE in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow.
And then I must scrub, and bake, and sweep,
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
But the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons, the blue and the red,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress.
While I must work, because I am old
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.