I said a line will take us hours maybe,
Yet if it does not seem a moments thought
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Adams Curse
Had I the heavens embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet sing it with such airs,
That one believed he had a sword upstairs.
All Things can Tempt Me
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Among School Children
Only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.
Anne Gregory
A starlit or a moonlit dome distains
All that man is;
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Byzantium
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
Byzantium
Now that my ladders gone
I must lie down where all ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
The Circus Animals Desertion pt. 3
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the worlds eye
As though theyd wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For theres more enterprise
In walking naked.
A Coat
We were the last romantics—chose for theme
Traditional sanctity and loveliness;
Whatevers written in what poets name
The book of the people; whatever most can bless
The mind of man or elevate a rhyme;
But all is changed, that high horse riderless,
Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode
Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.
Coole and Ballylee, 1931
The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
Coole Park and Ballylee, 1932
The Light of Lights
Looks always on the motive, not the deed,
The Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone.
The Countess Cathleen (1895) act 3
The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.
The Countess Cathleen (1895) act 4
A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all.
Death
He knows death to the bone—
Man has created death.
Death
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
Down by the Salley Gardens
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Easter, 1916
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
Easter, 1916
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Easter, 1916
I see a schoolboy when I think of him
With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,
For certainly he sank into his grave
His senses and his heart unsatisfied,
And made—being poor, ailing and ignorant,
Shut out from all the luxury of the world,
The ill-bred son of a livery stable-keeper—
Luxuriant song.
Ego Dominus Tuus (referring to Keats)
The fascination of whats difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart.
The Fascination of Whats Difficult
Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;
The second bests a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
From Oedipus at Colonus.
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
The Ghost of Roger Casement
I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet Gods will be done,
I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.
His Phoenix
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz
The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time.
In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight;
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of morn.
Into the Twilight
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor angry crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
An Irish Airman Foresees his Death
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnights all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnets wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep hearts core.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
The land of faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
The Land of Hearts Desire (1894) p. 12.
Land of Hearts Desire,
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song.
The Land of Hearts Desire (1894) p. 36.
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
Leda and the Swan
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Leda and the Swan
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand under his head.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.
Long-Legged Fly
What were all the worlds alarms
To mighty Paris when he found
Sleep upon a golden bed
That first night in Helens arms?
Lullaby
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The hearts grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; Oh, honey-bees
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
Meditations in Time of Civil War 6: The Stares Nest by my Window
Think where mans glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.
The Municipal Gallery Re-visited
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
No Second Troy |
Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle age?
On hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature
A pity beyond all telling,
Is hid in the heart of love.
The Pity of Love
An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plentys horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
A Prayer for My Daughter
I think it better that at times like these
We poets keep our mouths shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
Hes had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth
Or an old man upon a winters night.
A Reason for Keeping Silent
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mothers womb
A fanatic heart.
Remorse for Intemperate Speech
Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
The Rose of Battle
That is no country for old men. The young
In one anothers arms, birds in the trees—
Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish flesh or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten born and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
Sailing to Byzantium
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress.
Sailing to Byzantium
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
Sailing to Byzantium
Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in loves despair
To flatter beautys ignorant ear.
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?
The Scholars
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The Second Coming
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The Second Coming
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave;
Romantic Irelands dead and gone,
Its with OLeary in the grave.
September, 1913
I thought no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
A Song
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
Song of Wandering Aengus
You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attendance upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?
The Spur
Pythagoras planned it. Why did the people stare?
His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move
In marble or in bronze, lacked character.
But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough,
And pressed at midnight in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.
No! Greater than Pythagoras, for the men
That with a mallet or a chisel modelled these
Calculations that look but casual flesh, put down
All Asiatic vague immensities,
And not the banks of oars that swam upon
The many-headed foam at Salamis.
Europe put off that foam when Phidias
Gave women dreams and dreams their looking glass.
The Statues
When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side
What stalked through the Post Office? What intellect,
What calculation, number, measurement, replied?
We Irish, born into that ancient sect
But thrown upon this filthy modern tide
And by its formless spawning, fury wrecked,
Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace
The lineaments of a plummet-measured face.
The Statues
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.
Swifts Epitaph.
But wheres the wild dog that has praised his fleas?
To a Poet, Who would have Me Praise certain bad Poets, Imitators of His and of Mine
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways.
To the Rose upon the Rood of Time
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress.
To the Secret Rose
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
To the Secret Rose
Does the imagination dwell the most
Upon a woman won or woman lost?
If on the lost, admit you turned aside
From a great labyrinth out of pride.
The Tower pt. 2.
Measurement began our might:
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,
Forms that gentler Phidias wrought.
Michaelangelo left a proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam
Till her bowels are in heat,
Proof that theres a purpose set
Before the secret working mind:
Profane perfection of mankind.
Under Ben Bulben pt. 4.
Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers randy laughter.
Under Ben Bulben pt. 5.
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.
Under Ben Bulben pt. 5.
Under bare Ben Bulbens head
In Drumcliffe churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman pass by!
Under Ben Bulben pt. 6.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blesséd and could bless.
Vacillation
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book
And slowly read and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars
Murmur, a little sad, From us fled Love.
He paced upon the mountains far above,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
When You Are Old
What lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved bodily.
Flinging from his arms I laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that I gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch,
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.
A Woman Young and Old pt. 9.
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
Anima Hominis sect. 5 in Essays (1924).
In dreams begins responsibility.
Responsibilities (1914) epigraph.
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