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"A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew...."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Vacillation." |
"Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "A Drinking Song." |
"A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet. Byzantium (l. 5-8). . .
The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (1989) Macmillan. |
"I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man's attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "III. A First Confession." |
"A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought
Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade,
Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out.
It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Owen Aherne and His Dancers." |
"For what but eye and ear silence the mind
With the minute particulars of mankind?"
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes." |
"I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk
For passing round the bottle with girls in rags or silk,
In country shawl or Paris cloak, had put my wits astray,
And what's the good of women for all that they can say
Is fol de rol de rolly O."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "The Pilgrim." |
"O Patrick! for a hundred years
The gentle Niamh was my wife;
But now two things devour my life;
The things that most of all I hate:
Fasting and prayers."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "The Wanderings of Oisin." |
"Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But though that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Vacillation." |
"Come swish around my pretty punk
And keep me dancing still
That I may stay a sober man
Although I drink my fill."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "A Drunken Man's Praise of Sobriety." |
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William Butler Yeats
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