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I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young / And weep because I know all things now.
William Butler Yeats -
Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night.
William Butler Yeats
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The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.
William Butler Yeats -
Great literature has always been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of Sin, and when we find it becoming the Accusation of Sin, as in George Eliot, who plucks her Tito in pieces with as much assurance as if he had been clockwork, literature has begun to change into something else.
William Butler Yeats -
My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theater business, management of men.
William Butler Yeats -
What if the Church and the State Are the mob that howls at the door! Wine shall run thick to the end, Bread taste sour.
William Butler Yeats -
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.
William Butler Yeats -
Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end.
William Butler Yeats
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When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.
William Butler Yeats -
Everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.
William Butler Yeats -
An Irish Airman foresees his Death I Know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love, My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.
William Butler Yeats -
I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.
William Butler Yeats -
And many a poor man that has roved Loved and thought himself beloved From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
William Butler Yeats -
By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats -
Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.
William Butler Yeats -
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!
William Butler Yeats -
And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight.
William Butler Yeats -
What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.
William Butler Yeats -
Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.
William Butler Yeats
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Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
William Butler Yeats -
And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.
William Butler Yeats -
You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.
William Butler Yeats -
It is love that I am seeking for, But of a beautiful, unheard-of kind That is not in the world.
William Butler Yeats