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William Butler Yeats Quotes
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I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood
With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes....
William Butler Yeats
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The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.
William Butler Yeats
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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....
William Butler Yeats
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Why should I seek for love or study it?
It is of God and passes human wit;
I study hatred with great diligence,
For that's a passion in my own control,
A sort of besom that can clear the soul
Of everything that is not mind or sense.
William Butler Yeats
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Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while....
William Butler Yeats
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All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.
William Butler Yeats
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How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?
William Butler Yeats
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There where the course is,
Delight makes all of the one mind,
The riders upon the galloping horses,
The crowd that closes in behind....
William Butler Yeats
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Even
The bed of love, that in the imagination
Had seemed to be the giver of all peace,
Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting,
And as soon finished.
William Butler Yeats
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Poetry and music I have banished,
But the stupidity
Of root, shoot, blossom or clay
Makes no demand.
I bend my body to the spade
Or grope with a dirty hand.
William Butler Yeats
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I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.
William Butler Yeats
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And learn that the best thing is
To change my loves while dancing
And pay but a kiss for a kiss.
William Butler Yeats
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Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.
All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Breed out of the contagion of the throng,
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.
William Butler Yeats
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All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.
William Butler Yeats
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May we two stand,
When we are dead, beyond the setting suns,
A little from other shades apart,
With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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How could passion run so deep
Had I never thought
That the crime of being born
Blackens all our lot?
William Butler Yeats
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Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath,
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night....
William Butler Yeats
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And if joy were not on the earth,
There were an end of change and birth,
And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die,
And in some gloomy barrow lie
Folded like a frozen fly....
William Butler Yeats
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O would, beloved, that you lay
Under the dock-leaves in the ground,
While lights were paling one by one.
William Butler Yeats
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What can be shown?
What true love be?
All could be known or shown
If Time were but gone.
William Butler Yeats
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Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God's Providence.
William Butler Yeats
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I had this thought a while ago,
"My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land."
And I grew weary of the sun
William Butler Yeats
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I would that I were an old beggar
Rolling a blind pearl eye,
For he cannot see my lady
Go gallivanting by.
William Butler Yeats
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Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk
William Butler Yeats
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Quote of the day
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
William Butler Yeats
Creative Commons
Born:
June 13, 1865
Died:
January 28, 1939
(aged 73)
Bio:
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms.
Known for:
The Celtic Twilight (1894)
A Vision (1925)
The Winding Stair and Other Poems
The Land of Heart's Desire
Most used words:
man
heart
love
life
thought
eyes
mind
beauty
song
find
people
time
day
truth
god
William Butler Yeats on Wikipedia
William Butler Yeats works on Gutenberg Project
William Butler Yeats works on Wikisource
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