William Butler Yeats Quotes
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There is only one romance the Soul's.
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Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.
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I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
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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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But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
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... What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?
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Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.
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I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone.
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Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song.
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And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight.
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The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day; For half his flock were in their beds, Or under green sods lay.
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A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.
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Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while.
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While they danced they came over them the weariness with the world, the melancholy, the pity one for the other, which is the exultation of love.
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The Mask "Put off that mask of burning gold With emerald eyes." "O no, my dear, you make so bold To find if hearts be wild and wise, And yet not cold." "I would but find what's there to find, Love or deceit." "It was the mask engaged your mind, And after set your heart to beat, Not what's behind." "But lest you are my enemy, I must enquire." "O no, my dear, let all that be, What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?"
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I have heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow, Of poets that are always gay
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All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil.
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Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.
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I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.
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You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?
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The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam, Our arms are waving, our lips are apart.
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I, too, await The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. When shall the stars be blown about the sky, Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
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The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man's image and his cry.
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And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance.