William Butler Yeats Quotes
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But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.
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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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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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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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Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide: Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.
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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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I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.
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The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.
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Whatever flames upon the night Man's own resinous heart has fed.
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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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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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While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof, His "Morning" and his "Night" disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.
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A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?
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Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!
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The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.
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Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind.
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When You Are Old" WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
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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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Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
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Now must we sing and sing the best we can, But first you must be told your character: Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.
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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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People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
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Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.
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Come swish around my pretty punk And keep me dancing still That I may stay a sober man Although I drink my fill.