William Butler Yeats (1865-1939 / County Dublin / Ireland)

poet William Butler Yeats
#15 on top 500 poets

Quotations

  • ''A man in his own secret meditation
    Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made
    In art or politics....''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen."
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
    That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet. The Cold Heaven (l. 1-2). . . The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (1989) Macmillan.
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''That Time can never mar a lover's vows
    Under that woven changeless roof of boughs:
    The singing shook him out of his new ease.''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet. The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland (l. 10-12). . . The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (1989) Macmillan.
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''And all the popular statesmen say
    That purity built up the State
    And after kept it from decay;
    Admonish us to cling to that
    And let all base ambition be,
    For intellect would make us proud....''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "The Three Monuments."
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''Irish poets, learn your trade,
    Sing whatever is well made,
    Scorn the sort now growing up
    All out of shape from toe to top,''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet. Under Ben Bulben (l. 68-71). . . The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (1989) Macmillan.
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''But even at the starting post, all sleek and new,
    I saw the wildness in her and I thought
    A vision of terror that it must live through
    Had shattered her soul.''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "A Bronze Head."
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''For she had fiery blood
    When I was young,
    And trod so sweetly proud
    As 'twere upon a cloud,
    A woman Homer sung....''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "A Woman Homer Sung."
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
    Called architect and artist in, that they,
    Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
    The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
    The gentleness none there had ever known....''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "I. Ancestral Houses."
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''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 (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen."
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
    Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
    Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
    By the injustice of the skies for punishment?''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet. The Cold Heaven (l. 9-12). . . The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (1989) Macmillan.
    0 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.

Read more quotations »

The White Birds

I WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:

Read more »
[Hata Bildir]