William Butler Yeats Quotes - Page 21

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Age Aging Anarchy Angels Animals Art Balance

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.

William Butler Yeats

Work, Frustration, Night

William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

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Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?

William Butler Yeats

War, Past, Men

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.198, Wordsworth Editions

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Green, Hunger, Ugliness

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Feet, Hypocrisy, Safety

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.260, Simon and Schuster

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Acquaintance; companion;
One dear brilliant woman;
The best-endowed, the elect,
All by their youth undone,
All, all, by that inhuman
Bitter glory wrecked.

William Butler Yeats

Brilliant, Youth, Bitter

William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.253, Simon and Schuster

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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.

William Butler Yeats

God, Hatred, Soul

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.246, Wordsworth Editions

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I weave the shoes of Sorrow:
Soundless shall be the footfall light
In all men's ears of Sorrow,
Sudden and light.

William Butler Yeats

Fate, Men, Shoes

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.5, Wordsworth Editions

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Art, Public Opinion, Another Day

William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.72, Library of Alexandria

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Children, Heart, Eye

William Butler Yeats (2013). “Early Poems”, p.43, Courier Corporation

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I say that Roger Casement
Did what he had to do,
He died upon the gallows
But that is nothing new.

William Butler Yeats

Roger, Killing, Gallows

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.312, Simon and Schuster

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Now must we sing and sing the best we can,
But first you must be told your character:
Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.

William Butler Yeats

Character, Coward, Firsts

William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.170

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Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on.

William Butler Yeats

Children, Sleep, Storm

William Butler Yeats (2016). “Collected Poems”, p.101, William Butler Yeats

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Wine, Sleep, Ephesians

William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.143, Hayes Barton Press

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Greatness, Moisture, Mouths

"Byzantium" l. 15 (1933)

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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

Heart, Mad, Shade

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.187, Wordsworth Editions

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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.

William Butler Yeats

Boys, Men, Optimism

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.116, Wordsworth Editions

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The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day;
For half his flock were in their beds,
Or under green sods lay.

William Butler Yeats

Night, Bed, Half

William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.137, Penguin

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Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye.
What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high,
And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher,
Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.

William Butler Yeats

Eye, Fire, Feet

William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.193, Hayes Barton Press

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Because the priest must have like every dog his day
Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon,
We and our dolls being but the world were best away.

William Butler Yeats

Dog, Moon, Dolls

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.159, Simon and Schuster

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Laughter not time destroyed my voice
And put that crack in it,
And when the moon's pot-bellied
I get a laughing fit.

William Butler Yeats

Laughter, Moon, Voice

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.228, Simon and Schuster

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Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked and where are they?

William Butler Yeats

Holiday, Gay, Wind

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.178, Wordsworth Editions

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On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw
A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw,
A Buddha, hand at rest,
Hand lifted up that blest;
And right between these two a girl at play
That, it may be, had danced her life away.

William Butler Yeats

Girl, Rocks, Hands

William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.446, Simon and Schuster

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In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
Half dead at the top.

William Butler Yeats

Powerful, Symbolism, Towers

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.241, Simon and Schuster

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somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

William Butler Yeats

Moving, Men, Bird

William Butler Yeats (2015). “A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.192, Simon and Schuster

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But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.

William Butler Yeats

Sad, Sole, Whole

"Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop" l. 13 (1932)

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Born: June 13, 1865
Died: January 28, 1939
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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