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William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)


Irish symbolist poet, dramatist and mystic.
William Butler Yeats
Then he struggled with the mind;
His proud heart he left behind.
Yeats quotes
Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end.
Yeats
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.




Yeats William Butler quotes
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name.
Yeats William Butler
Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked— and where are they?
William Butler Yeats quotes
Land of Heart's Desire,
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
William Butler Yeats
I pray — for word is out
And prayer comes round again —
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.
Yeats William Butler quotes
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Yeats
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
Yeats William Butler
It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.
William Butler Yeats
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words.




William Butler Yeats quotes
Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.
William Butler Yeats
Sweetheart, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other's
We were so much at one.
But O, in a minute she changed--
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song.
Yeats quotes
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Yeats William Butler
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.
Yeats William Butler quotes
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
William Butler Yeats
I heard the old, old men say,
'Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.'
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
'All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.'
William Butler Yeats quotes
The 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.
William Butler Yeats
Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free.
Yeats William Butler
O hurry where by water among the trees
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have but looked upon their images--
Would none had ever loved but you and I!


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