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A lonely impulse of delight
William Butler Yeats -
Man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality.
William Butler Yeats
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I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore, Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be, Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
William Butler Yeats -
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.
William Butler Yeats -
If there's no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf
William Butler Yeats -
Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.
William Butler Yeats -
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
William Butler Yeats -
For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.
William Butler Yeats
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Who mocks at music mocks at love.
William Butler Yeats -
I thought it out this very day, Noon upon the clock, A man may put pretence away Who leans upon a stick, May sing, and sing until he drop, Whether to maid or hag.
William Butler Yeats -
Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?
William Butler Yeats -
What can be explained is not poetry.
William Butler Yeats -
I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made.
William Butler Yeats -
An age is the reversal of an age: When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone, We lived like men that watch a painted stage. What matter for the scene, the scene once gone: It had not touched our lives.
William Butler Yeats
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on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.
William Butler Yeats -
A poet is a good citizen turned inside out.
William Butler Yeats -
I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?
William Butler Yeats -
Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when the abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all: And after that there's nothing good Because the spring time has not come- Not know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb.
William Butler Yeats -
Education is not filling
William Butler Yeats -
All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will
William Butler Yeats
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A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.
William Butler Yeats -
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
William Butler Yeats -
I have heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow, Of poets that are always gay
William Butler Yeats -
Tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might.
William Butler Yeats