William Butler Yeats Quotes
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I have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .
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Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.
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Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.
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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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What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
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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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Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.
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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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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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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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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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May we two stand, When we are dead, beyond the setting suns, A little from other shades apart, With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.
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We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love
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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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I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs, Those undreamt accidents that have made me Seeing that Fame has perished this long while, Being but a part of ancient ceremony Notorious, till all my priceless things Are but a post the passing dogs defile.
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I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.
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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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What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?
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Tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might.
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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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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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We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy.
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And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
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All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay.