“A passion-driven exultant man sings out
Sentences that he has never thought.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.”
Source: Selected Poems And Four Plays
“The Muse is mute when public men
Applaud a modern throne.”
Source: Poems of William Butler Yeats
“Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,
And the winds that blow through the starry ways,
Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood
Cover over and hide, for he has no part
With the lonely, majestical multitude.”
Source: COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS
“Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will.”
Source: Later Poems
“on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.”
Source: The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose
“All that could run or leap or swim
Whether in wood, water or cloud,
Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him.”
Source: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition
“The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart.”
Source: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition
“The Bishop has a skin, God knows,
Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor can he hide in holy black
The heron's hunch upon his back,
But a birch-tree stood my Jack.”
Source: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition
“When we have blamed the wind we can blame love.”
Source: Later Poems
“A spot whereon the founders lived and died
Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees,
Or gardens rich in memory glorified
Marriages, alliances, and families,
And every bride's ambition satisfied.”
Source: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol X: Later Article: Uncollected Articles, Reviews, and Radio Broadcasts Written After 1900
“For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.”
“Acquaintance; companion;
One dear brilliant woman;
The best-endowed, the elect,
All by their youth undone,
All, all, by that inhuman
Bitter glory wrecked.”
Source: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition
“I broke my heart in two
So hard I struck.
What matter? for I know
That out of rock,
Out of a desolate source,
Love leaps upon its course.”
Source: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition
“Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.”
Source: The Major Works
“My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.”
Source: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition
“I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!”
Source: When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales
“He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care,
Had pity on the least of things
Asleep upon a chair.”
Source: COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS
“Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride
That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide:
Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“All men live in suffering
I know as few can know,
Whether they take the upper road
Or stay content on the low.”
Source: COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS
“I had a chair at every hearth,
When no one turned to see,
With 'Look at that old fellow there,
'And who may he be?”
Source: When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales
“Civilisation is hooped together, brought
Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
By manifold illusion.”
Source: The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose
“I weave the shoes of Sorrow:
Soundless shall be the footfall light
In all men's ears of Sorrow,
Sudden and light.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,
That loved his learning better than mankind,
Though courteous to the worst; much falling he
Brooded upon sanctity.”
Source: Later Poems
“I know, although when looks meet
I tremble to the bone,
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone.”
Source: The Major Works
“There's keen delight in what we have:
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding wave.”
Source: Selected Poems And Four Plays
“... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.”
Source: Collected Poems
“O would, beloved, that you lay
Under the dock-leaves in the ground,
While lights were paling one by one.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.”
“I--love's skein upon the ground,
My body in the tomb--
Shall leap into the light lost
In my mother's womb.”
Source: Selected Poems And Four Plays
“O sweet everlasting Voices, be still;
Go to the guards of the heavenly fold
And bid them wander obeying your will,
Flame under flame, till Time be no more.”
Source: Early Poems
“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 fadeand 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.”
Source: Early Poems
“When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things.”
Source: Later Poems
“The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“O heart the winds have shaken, the unappeasable host
Is comelier than candles at Mother Mary's feet.”
Source: Selected Poems And Four Plays
“The Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold,
And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes,
For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies,
With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold.”
Source: Early Poems
“I say that Roger Casement
Did what he had to do,
He died upon the gallows
But that is nothing new.”
Source: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition
“Now must we sing and sing the best we can,
But first you must be told your character:
Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.”
Source: The Major Works
“And learn that the best thing is
To change my loves while dancing
And pay but a kiss for a kiss.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“The common breeds the common,
A lout begets a lout,
So when I take on half a score
I knock their heads about.”
Source: COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS
“Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on.”
Source: Collected Poems
“now
I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.”
Source: Poems of William Butler Yeats
“A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.”
“A drunkard is a dead man
And all dead men are drunk.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“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.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“Though logic-choppers rule the town,
And every man and maid and boy
Has marked a distant object down,
An aimless joy is a pure joy.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead,
For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said.
Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind.”
Source: Poems of William Butler Yeats
“The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day;
For half his flock were in their beds,
Or under green sods lay.”
Source: When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales
