“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”

“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.”

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

“THE ROSETOTHE ROSE UPON THE ROOD OF TIMERed Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown oldIn dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,Sing in their high and lonely melody.Come near, that no more blinded by man’s fate,I find under the boughs of love and hate,In all poor foolish things that live a day,Eternal beauty wandering on her way.Come near, come near, come near — Ah, leave me stillA little space for the rose-breath to fill!Lest I no more bear common things that crave;The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,The field-mouse running by me in the grass,And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;But seek alone to hear the strange things saidBy God to the bright hearts of those long dead,And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.Come near; I would, before my time to go,Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.A king is but a foolish labourerWho wastes his blood to be another’s dream.”

“Literature is, to my mind, the great teaching power of the world, the ultimate creator of all values, and it is this, not only in the sacred books whose power everybody acknowledges, but by every movement of imagination in song or story or drama that height of intensity and sincerity has made literature at all. Literature must take the responsibility of its power, and keep all its freedom: it must be like the spirit and like the wind that blows where it listeth; it must claim its right to pierce through every crevice of human nature, and to descrive the relation of the soul and the heart to the facts of life and of law, and to describe that relation as it is, not as we would have it be...”

“The Lake Isle of InnisfreeI will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,And live alone in the bee-loud glade.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.I will arise and go now, for always night and dayI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”

“The Song Of The Happy ShepherdThe woods of Arcady are dead,And over is their antique joy;Of old the world on dreaming fed;Grey Truth is now her painted toy;Yet still she turns her restless head:But O, sick children of the world,Of all the many changing thingsIn dreary dancing past us whirled,To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,Words alone are certain good.Where are now the warring kings,Word be-mockers?—By the Rood,Where are now the watring kings?An idle word is now their glory,By the stammering schoolboy said,Reading some entangled story:The kings of the old time are dead;The wandering earth herself may beOnly a sudden flaming word,In clanging space a moment heard,Troubling the endless reverie.Then nowise worship dusty deeds,Nor seek, for this is also sooth,To hunger fiercely after truth,Lest all thy toiling only breedsNew dreams, new dreams; there is no truthSaving in thine own heart. Seek, then,No learning from the starry men,Who follow with the optic glassThe whirling ways of stars that pass—Seek, then, for this is also sooth,No word of theirs—the cold star-baneHas cloven and rent their hearts in twain,And dead is all their human truth.Go gather by the humming seaSome twisted, echo-harbouring shell.And to its lips thy story tell,And they thy comforters will be.Rewording in melodious guileThy fretful words a little while,Till they shall singing fade in ruthAnd die a pearly brotherhood;For words alone are certain good:Sing, then, for this is also sooth.I must be gone: there is a graveWhere daffodil and lily wave,And I would please the hapless faun,Buried under the sleepy ground,With mirthful songs before the dawn.His shouting days with mirth were crowned;And still I dream he treads the lawn,Walking ghostly in the dew,Pierced by my glad singing through,My songs of old earth’s dreamy youth:But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou!For fair are poppies on the brow:Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.”