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

poet William Butler Yeats
#15 on top 500 poets

Quotations

  • ''Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
    Alone, important and wise,
    And lifts to the changing moon
    His changing eyes.''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet. The Cat and the Moon (l. 25-28). . . The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (1989) Macmillan.
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  • ''Though you are in your shining days,
    Voices among the crowd
    And new friends busy with your praise,
    Be not unkind or proud,
    But think about old friends the most....''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "The Lover Pleads with His Friend for Old Friends."
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  • ''But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
    Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
    That passion could bring character enough
    And pressed at midnighht in some public place
    Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet. The Statues (l. 4-8). . . The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (1989) Macmillan.
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  • ''I bear a burden that might well try
    Men that do all by rule,
    And what can I
    That am a wandering-witted fool
    But pray to God that He ease
    My great responsibilities?''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Two Songs of a Fool."
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  • ''Though I have many words,
    What woman's satisfied,
    I am no longer faint
    Because at her side?
    O who could have foretold
    That the heart grows old?''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "A Song."
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  • ''his head
    May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair
    Of the woman that he loves, until he dies.
    O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,
    Must I endure your amorous cries?''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "He Thinks of his Past Greatness When a Part of the Constellations of Heaven."
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  • ''For everything that's lovely is
    But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Never Give All the Heart."
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  • ''What's left to sigh for,
    Strange night has come;
    God's love has hidden him
    Out of all harm,
    Pleasure has made him
    Weak as a worm.''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "The Chambermaid's First Song."
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  • ''O women, kneeling by your altar-rails long hence,
    When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,
    And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air
    And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;
    Bend down and pray for all that sin I wove in song....''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "The Lover Speaks to the Hearers of His Songs in Coming Days."
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  • ''We Irish, born into that ancient sect
    But thrown upon this filthy modern tide
    And by its formless spawning fury wrecked,
    Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace
    The lineaments of a plummet-measured face.''
    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet. The Statues (l. 28-32). . . The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (1989) Macmillan.
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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:

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