The Tower (poem)  "The Tower" is a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. It is a passionate indictment of a man wrestling with age. It is the second poem in "The Tower", a 1928 collection of Yeats's poems. "Below appears a small extract from the poem: "   What shall I do with this absurdity – O heart, O troubled heart – this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible – No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly, Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back And had the livelong summer day to spend. It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack, Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend Until imagination, ear and eye, Can be content with argument and deal In abstract things; or be derided by A sort of battered kettle at the heel. William Butler Yeats