W.B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).
Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia
“....tradition gives the one thing many shapes.”
“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”
“...Those masterful images because completeGrew in pure mind, but out of what began?A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slutWho keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,I must lie down where all the ladders startIn the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”
“We have fallen in the dreams the ever-livingBreathe on the tarnished mirror of the world,And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.”
“Where there is nothing, there is God.”
“I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed, so great my happiness,That I was blessed and could bless.”
“From man's blood-sodden heart are sprungThose branches of the night and dayWhere the gaudy moon is hung.What's the meaning of all song?"Let all things pass away.”
“So the platonic YearWhirls out new right and wrong,Whirls in the old instead;All men are dancers and their treadGoes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.”
“And when white moths were on the wing and moth-like stars were flickering out”
“The host is rushing 'twixt day and night,And where is there hope or deed as fair?Caoilte tossing his burning hair,And Niamh calling Away, come away.”
“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;...”
“There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,And evening full of the linnet's wings.”
“Cuchulain stirred,Stared on the horses of the sea, and heardThe cars of battle and his own name cried;And fought with the invulnerable tide.”
“For he would be thinking of loveTill the stars had run awayAnd the shadows eaten the moon.”
“Now that my ladder's gone,I must lie down where all my ladders start,In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”
“A lonely impulse of delight”
“But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."(Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven)”
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; 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 Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
“Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.”
“Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”
“rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination”
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
“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.”
“Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.”
“And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings...”
“A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own,Pressed her body to his body,Laughed; and plunging downForgot in cruel happinessThat even lovers drown.”
“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.”
“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”
“What can be explained is not poetry.”
“WINE comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and sigh.”