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"What is the good of a man and he
Alone and alone, with a speckled shin?
I would that I drank with my love on my knee,
Between two barrels at the inn.
Oro, oro!
To-morrow night I will break down the door."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Two Songs Rewritten for the Tune's Sake." |
"I thought no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
O who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?"
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "A Song." |
"O would, beloved, that you lay
Under the dock-leaves in the ground,
While lights were paling one by one."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead." |
"Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss...."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Never Give All the Heart." |
"From pleasure of the bed,
Dull as a worm,
His rod and its butting head
Limp as a worm ..."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "The Chambermaid's Second Song." |
"All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart." |
"Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet. The Stolen Child (l. 9-12). . .
The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Richard J. Finneran, ed. (1989) Macmillan. |
"Alone and alone nine nights I lay
Between two bushes under the rain;
I thought to have whistled her down that way,
I whistled and whistled and whistled in vain.
Oro, oro!
To-morrow night I will break down the door."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "Two Songs Rewritten for the Tune's Sake." |
"My mother dandled me and sang,
"How young it is, how young!"
And made a golden cradle
That on a willow swung.
"He went away," my mother sang,
"When I was brought to bed....""
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "A Song from 'The Player Queen'...." |
"Were you but lying cold and dead,
And lights were paling out of the West,
You would come hither, and bend your head,
And I would lay my head on your breast...."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright. "He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead." |
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William Butler Yeats
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