William Butler Yeats Quotes
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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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Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.
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How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot?
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What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?
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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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Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.
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I sat on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away.
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And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss.
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The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.
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Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, With your harmonious choir Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, That my old care may cease.
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somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
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What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.
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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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The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.
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There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind.
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All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay.
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Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.
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My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me.
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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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Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
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And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.
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Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
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The women take so little stock In what I do or say They'd sooner leave their cosseting To hear a jackass bray.
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But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.