Yeats on the difficulty of focus

Somehow it’s comforting to see that even the masters are easily distracted. Also, fool-driven land is apparently both universal and constant.

Responsibilities and Other Poems

52. All Things can tempt me
 

ALL things can tempt me from this craft of verse:

One time it was a woman’s face, or worse— 

The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; 

Now nothing but comes readier to the hand 

Than this accustomed toil. When I was young,

I had not given a penny for a song 

Did not the poet sing it with such airs 

That one believed he had a sword upstairs; 

Yet would be now, could I but have my wish, 

Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish.

- W. B. Yeats