William Butler Yeats Quotes
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The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.
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As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.
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A lonely impulse of delight
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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
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If Michael, leader of God's host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post He would his deeds forget.
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I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.
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Fair and foul are near of kin And fair needs foul," I cried. "My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied."
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Many times man lives and dies between his two eternities: that of race and that of Soul... A brief parting from those dear is the worst man has to fear... Though grave diggers' toil is long... They but thrust their buried men back in the human mind again.
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Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity.
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I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
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Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
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All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
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Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?
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All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.
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Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.
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And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind, Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind: I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.
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Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O Never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.
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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.
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O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.
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What can be explained is not poetry.
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Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried; And fought with the invulnerable tide.
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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.
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Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with metry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
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My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.