William Butler Yeats Quotes
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even The bed of love, that in the imagination Had seemed to be the giver of all peace, Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting, And as soon finished.
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Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.
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One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.
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In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time Half dead at the top.
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... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.
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For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,”Here is the fiddler of Dooney!” / And dance like a wave of the sea.
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Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil
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Land of Heart's Desire Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
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Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
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He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.
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I have nothing but the embittered sun; Banished heroic mother moon and vanished, And now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun.
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How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?
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Though pedantry denies, It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens.
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I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood; And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes.
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My wretched dragon is perplexed.
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Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.
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I would that there was nothing in the world But my beloved that night and day had perished, And all that is and all that is to be, All that is not the meeting of our lips.
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Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
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Everything in nature is resurrection.
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He Who is wrapped in purple robes, With planets in His care, Had pity on the least of things Asleep upon a chair.
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And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
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I had a chair at every hearth, When no one turned to see, With 'Look at that old fellow there, 'And who may he be?
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I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch.
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Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.