One of my favourite lines from a poem - ever - is a phrase from a little known Yeats number called "For Anne Gregory". There's nothing remarkable about it. Like all good poetry it's small but perfectly formed. I don't know much about its context, but I think I can assume that it was written for a young woman - Anne, perhaps? - and she has beautiful "honey-coloured rampants at her ears". The poem is basically an ode to her blonde locks. At the very end of the poem he says, "only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair". How wonderful. I used to love that bit in A.S Byatt's novel Possession when we first meet Maud and learn that she keeps her beautiful golden hair wrapped up in the turban because her ex-lover used to say to her "who could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair?". I almost like it more as a question. Who could? I am constantly stunned by blonde hair and how truly lovely it is. The first boy I ever kissed had blonde-hair, it was too-long and it hung down, honey-coloured rampants at his ears, and when he would get out of the water or come up from the beach he would shake it loose in a way I have since heard described as the unconsciously virile way of teenage boys, which is kind of perfect, don't you think? There is something sun-drenched and youthful and full of life about yellow hair. I hate to reduce people to the sum of their parts, but a good head of yellow hair will always be the trump card for me.
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