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

''And Peter that had great affairs
And was a pushing man
Shrieks, "I am King of the Peacocks,"
And perches on a stone;
And then I laugh till tears run down
And the heart thumps at my side....''

''I have mummy truths to tell
Whereat the living mock,
Though not for sober ear,
For maybe all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.''

''But stories that live longest
Are sung above the glass,
And Parnell loved his country
And Parnell loved his lass.''

''And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,
That dying chose the living world for text
And never could have rested in the tomb
But that, long travelling, he had come
Towards nightfall upon certain set apart
In a most desolate stony place....''

''Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies,
But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes
Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.''

''"... Can poet's thought
That springs from body and in body falls
Like this pure jet, now lost amid blue sky,
Now bathing lily leaf and fish's scale,
Be mimicry?"''

''Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all Platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline.''

''But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;''

''Through light-obliterating garden foliage what magic drum?
Down limb and breast or down that glimmering belly move his mouth and sinewy tongue.
What from the forest came? What beast has licked its young?''

''Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell
Whether of her or God he thought the most,
But think that his mind's eye,
When upward turned, on one sole image fell;
And that a slight companionable ghost ...''