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Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.
William Butler Yeats -
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
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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 -
When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his work by chance.
William Butler Yeats -
The Father and His angelic hierarchy That made the magnitude and glory there Stood in the circuit of a needle's eye.
William Butler Yeats -
The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about.
William Butler Yeats -
Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats -
I would that I were an old beggar Rolling a blind pearl eye, For he cannot see my lady Go gallivanting by.
William Butler Yeats
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The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect.
William Butler Yeats -
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
William Butler Yeats -
It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.
William Butler Yeats -
The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.
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 -
What can be explained is not poetry.
William Butler Yeats
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I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
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 -
No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority.
William Butler Yeats -
Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.
William Butler Yeats -
I long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My better self disowns, For a man's attention Brings such satisfaction To the craving in my bones.
William Butler Yeats -
It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.
William Butler Yeats
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I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
William Butler Yeats -
Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend.
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 -
And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.
William Butler Yeats