William Butler Yeats

“Think where man's glory most begins and endsAnd say my glory was I had such friends.”

“One had a lovely face,And two or three had charm,But charm and face were in vainBecause the mountain grassCannot but keep the formWhere the mountain hare has lain.- Memory”

“Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal;A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all.”

“...Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing. Beauty grown sad with its eternity Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea. Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait, For God has bid them share an equal fate; And when at last defeated in His wars, They have gone down under the same white stars, We shall no longer hear the little cry Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.”

“Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earnedBy those who are not entirely beautiful.”

“All the great masters have understood that there cannot be great art without the little limited life of the fable, which is always better the simpler it is, and the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of the half-seen world beyond it”

“Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away. ”

“And now he is singing a bard's curse upon you, O brother abbot, and upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather and your grandmother, nd upon all your relations.'Is he cursing in rhyme?'He is cursing in rhyme, and with two assonances in every line of his curse.'("The Crucifixion Of The Outcast")”

“O cowardly amd tyrannous race of monks, persecutors of the bard, and the gleemen, haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with deceit! ("The Crucifixion Of The Outcast")”

“The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much – indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are adverse to sitting down to dine thirteen at a table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, of seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tale. There are, of course, children of light who have set their faces against all this, although even a newspaperman, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for everyone is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt, unlike any other, is a visionary without scratching.”

“The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.”

“THE HOST is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare; Caolte tossing his burning hair And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam, Our arms are waving, our lips are apart; And if any gaze on our rushing band, We come between him and the deed of his hand, We come between him and the hope of his heart. The host is rushing ’twixt night and day, And where is there hope or deed as fair? Caolte tossing his burning hair, And Niamh calling Away, come away”

“If I make the lashes darkAnd the eyes more brightAnd the lips more scarlet,Or ask if all be rightFrom mirror after mirror,No vanity's displayed:I'm looking for the face I hadBefore the world was made.”

“Wstanę teraz, by pójść ku wyspie Innisfree,Chatka z gliny i łóz na środku wyspy stanie:W dziewięciu rzędach groch i ul, i pszczoły, iMieszkanie będę miał na pełnej pszczół polanie. I znajdę spokój tam, gdzie świerszczy śpiewny gwar,Spokój z poranka mgieł powoli spłynie w końcu;Północ tam zawsze lśni, błyszczy południa żar,A purpurowy zmierzch pełen jest skrzydeł dzwońców. Wstanę teraz, by pójść, bo słyszę fali głos,Choć plusk. gdy liże brzeg, ledwie się wsącza w ciszę;Jezdni pod stopą bruk, chodnik czy asfalt szos,Słyszę go dzień i noc, na sercu dnia go słyszę.”

“It was the dream itself enchanted me:Character isolated by a deedTo engross the present and dominate memory.Players and painted stage took all my love,And not those things that they were emblems of.[from "The Circus Animals' Desertion"]”

“THAT crazed girl improvising her music.Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,Her soul in division from itselfClimbing, falling She knew not where,Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declareA beautiful lofty thing, or a thingHeroically lost, heroically found.No matter what disaster occurredShe stood in desperate music wound,Wound, wound, and she made in her triumphWhere the bales and the baskets layNo common intelligible soundBut sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea”

“TO SOME I HAVE TALKED WITH BY THE FIREWHILE I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,My heart would brim with dreams about the timesWhen we bent down above the fading coalsAnd talked of the dark folk who live in soulsOf passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;And of the wayward twilight companiesWho sigh with mingled sorrow and content,Because their blossoming dreams have never bentUnder the fruit of evil and of good:And of the embattled flaming multitudeWho rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name,And with the clashing of their sword-blades makeA rapturous music, till the morning breakAnd the white hush end all but the loud beatOf their long wings, the flash of their white feet.”

“I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.”

“Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?”

“People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. ”

“The intellect of man is forced to choosePerfection of the life, or of the work.”

“I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.”

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

“Things fall apart;the center cannot hold...”

“We can only begin to live when we conceive life asTragedy.”

“Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.”

“I said: 'A line will take us hours maybe;Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”

“In dreams begin responsibilities.”

“Irish poets, learn your trade,sing whatever is well made,scorn the sort now growing upall out of shape from toe to top.”

“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

“A daughter of a King of Ireland, heardA voice singing on a May Eve like this,And followed half awake and half asleep,Until she came into the Land of Faery,Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.And she is still there, busied with a danceDeep in the dewy shadow of a wood,Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top.”

“All the wild-witches, those most notable ladiesFor all their broom-sticks and their tears,Their angry tears, are gone.”

“Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.”

“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,For I would ride with you upon the wind,Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”

“There are no strangers, only friends you have not met yet.”

“Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell?-Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil”

“God guard me from those thoughts men thinkIn the mind alone.”

“Come away, O human child!To the waters and the wildWith a faery, hand in hand,For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

“O SWEET everlasting Voices, be still;Go to the guards of the heavenly foldAnd bid them wander obeying your will,Flame under flame, till Time be no more;Have you not heard that our hearts are old,That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?O sweet everlasting Voices, be still. ”

“The Cat and the Moon The cat went here and thereAnd the moon spun round like a top,And the nearest kin of the moon,The creeping cat, looked up.Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,For, wander and wail as he would,The pure cold light in the skyTroubled his animal blood.Minnaloushe runs in the grassLifting his delicate feet.Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?When two close kindred meet,What better than call a dance?Maybe the moon may learn,Tired of that courtly fashion,A new dance turn.Minnaloushe creeps through the grassFrom moonlit place to place,The sacred moon overheadHas taken a new phase.Does Minnaloushe know that his pupilsWill pass from change to change,And that from round to crescent,From crescent to round they range?Minnaloushe creeps through the grassAlone, important and wise,And lifts to the changing moonHis changing eyes.”

“We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.”

“BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with merry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee. There the Loves a circle go, The flaming circle of our days, Gyring, spiring to and fro In those great ignorant leafy ways; Remembering all that shaken hair And how the wingèd sandals dart, Thine eyes grow full of tender care: Beloved, gaze in thine own heart. 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; For there a fatal image grows That the stormy night receives, Roots half hidden under snows, Broken boughs and blackened leaves. For all things turn to barrenness In the dim glass the demons hold, The glass of outer weariness, Made when God slept in times of old. There, through the broken branches, go The ravens of unresting thought; Flying, crying, to and fro, Cruel claw and hungry throat, Or else they stand and sniff the wind, And shake their ragged wings; alas! Thy tender eyes grow all unkind: Gaze no more in the bitter glass.- The Two Trees”

“I must lie down where all the ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”

“I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.”

“PoliticsHow can I, that girl standing there,My attention fixOn Roman or on RussianOr on Spanish politics?Yet here's a travelled man that knowsWhat he talks about,And there's a politicianThat has read and thought,And maybe what they say is trueOf war and war's alarms,But O that I were young againAnd held her in my arms!”

“My wretched dragon is perplexed.”

“I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away....the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.”

“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.”

“...I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made...”