W. B. YEATS QUOTES

Here we will moor our lonely ship

And wander ever with woven hands,

Murmuring softly lip to lip,

Along the grass, along the sands,

Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,

And weary and worn are our sad souls now;

Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,

With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

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.

Although our love is waning, let us stand

By the lone border of the lake once more,

Together in that hour of gentleness

When the poor tired child, Passion, falls asleep:

How far away the stars seem, and how far

Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!

Where dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water rats;

There we've hid our faery vats,

Full of berrys

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

The woods of Arcady are dead,

And over is their antique joy;

Of old the world on dreaming fed;

Grey Truth is now her painted toy;

Yet still she turns her restless head.

Words alone are certain good.

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

The fascination of what's difficult

Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent

Spontaneous joy and natural content

Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt

That must, as if it had not holy blood

Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,

Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt

As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays

That have to be set up in fifty ways,

On the day's war with every knave and dolt,

Theatre business, management of men.

I swear before the dawn comes round again

I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That's all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth,

I look at you, and I sigh.

Though leaves are many, the root is one;

Through all the lying days of my youth

I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;

Now I may wither into the truth.

I that have not your faith, how shall I know

That in the blinding light beyond the grave

We’ll find so good a thing as that we have lost?

The hourly kindness, the day’s common speech,

The habitual content of each with each

When neither soul nor body has been crossed.

I swayed upon the gaudy stern

The butt-end of a steering-oar,

And saw wherever I could turn

A crowd upon a shore.

And though I would have hushed the crowd,

There was no mother's son but said,

'What is the figure in a shroud

Upon a gaudy bed?'

And after running at the brim

Cried out upon that thing beneath

--It had such dignity of a limb--

By the sweet name of Death.

Though I'd my finger on my lip,

What could I but take up the song?

And running crowd and gaudy ship

Cried out the whole night long,

Crying amid the glittering sea,

Naming it with the ecstatic breath,

Because it had such dignity,

By the sweet name of Death.

Some may have blamed you that you took away

The verses that could move them on the day

When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind

With lightning, you went from me, and I could find

Nothing to make a song about but kings,

Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things

That were like memories of you--but now

We'll out, for the world lives as long ago;

And while we're in our laughing, weeping fit,

Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit.

But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,

My barren thoughts have chilld me to the bone.

Ah, that Time could touch a form

That could show what Homer's age

Bred to be a hero's wage.

'Were not all her life but a storm,

Would not painters pain a form

Of such noble lines,' I said,

'Such a delicate high head,

All that sternness amid charm,

All that sweetness amid strength?

Ah, but peace that comes at length,

Came when Time had touched her form.

O heart, be at peace, because

Nor knave nor dolt can break

What's not for their applause

Being for a woman's sake.

Enough if the work has seemed,

So did she your strength renew,

A dream that a lion had dreamed

Till the wildnerness cried aloud,

A secret between you two,

Between the proud and the proud.

What, still you would have their praise!

But here's a haughtier text,

The labyrinth of her days

That her own strangeness perplexed;

And how what her dreaming gave

Earned slander, ingratitude,

From self-same dolt and knave;

Aye, and worse wrong than these.

Yet she, singing upon her road,

Half lion, half child, is at peace.

You say, as I have often given tongue

In praise of what another's said or sung,

'Twere politic to do the like by these;

But was there ever a dog that praised his fleas?

Have you made greatness your companion,

Although it be for children that you sigh:

These are the clouds about the fallen sun,

The majesty that shuts his burning eye.

O love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love

Till the stars had run away

And the shadows eaten the moon.

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods

Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees

Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away

The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness

That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile

Tara uprooted, and new commonness

Upon the throne and crying about the streets

And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,

Because it is alone of all things happy.

I am contented,for I know that Quiet

Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart

Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,

Who but awaits His house to shoot, still hands

A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-lee.

I thought of your beauty, and this arrow,

Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.

There's no man may look upon her, no man,

As when newly grown to be a woman,

Tall and noble but with face and bosom

Delicate in colour as apple blossom.

This beauty's kinder, yet for a reason

I could weep that the old is out of season.

To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay,

Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.

One that is ever kind said yesterday:

'Your well-belovéd's hair has threads of grey,

And little shadows come about her eyes;

Time can but make it easier to be wise

Though now it seems impossible, and so

All that you need is patience.'

Heart cries, 'No,

I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.

Time can but make her beauty over again:

Because of that great nobleness of hers

The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,

Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways

When all the wild summer was in her gaze.'

O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,

You'd know the folly of being comforted.

Never give all the heart, for love

Will hardly seem worth thinking of

To passionate women if it seem

Certain, and the never dream

That it fades out from kiss to kiss;

For everything that's lovely is

but a brief, dreamy, kind of delight.

O never give the heart outright,

For they, for all smooth lips can say,

Have given their hearts up to the play.

And who could play it well enough

If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

He that made this knows all the cost,

For he gave all his heart and lost.

I heard the old, old men say,

'Everything alters,

And one by one we drop away.'

They had hands like claws, and their knees

Were twisted like the old thorn-trees

By the waters.

I heard the old, old men say,

'All that's beautiful drifts away

Like the waters.'

O hurry where by water among the trees

The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,

When they have but looked upon their images--

Would none had ever loved but you and I!

Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed

Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,

When the sun looked out of his golden hood?--

O that none ever loved but you and I!

O hurry to the ragged wood, for there

I will drive all those lovers out and cry--

O my share of the world, O yellow hair!

No one has ever loved but you and I.

Sweetheart, do not love too long:

I loved long and long,

And grew to be out of fashion

Like an old song.

All through the years of our youth

Neither could have known

Their own thought from the other's

We were so much at one.

But O, in a minute she changed--

O do not love too long,

Or you will grow out of fashion

Like an old song.

A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow-bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world.

It’s certain there is no fine thing

Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

Precedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:

That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

Nothing that we love over-much

Is ponderable to our touch.

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 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?

Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain

Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end.

While I, that reed-throated whisperer

Who comes at need, although not now as once

A clear articulation in the air,

But inwardly, surmise companions

Beyond the fling of the dull ass’s hoof

—Ben Jonson’s phrase—and find when June is come

At Kyle-na-no under that ancient roof

A sterner conscience and a friendlier home,

I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,

Those undreamt accidents that have made me

—Seeing that Fame has perished that long while,

Being but a part of ancient ceremony—

Notorious, till all my priceless things

Are but a post the passing dogs defile.

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 Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Now all the truth is out,

Be secret and take defeat

From any brazen throat,

For how can you compete,

Being honour bred, with one

Who, were it proved he lies,

Were neither shamed in his own

Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?

Bred to a harder thing

Than Triumph, turn away

And like a laughing string

Whereon mad fingers play

Amid a place of stone,

Be secret and exult,

Because of all things known

That is most difficult.

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,

In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky

With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,

And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,

And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,

Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

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 world’s eyes

As though they’d wrought it.

Song, let them take it,

For there’s more enterprise

In walking naked.

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!

Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways.

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 honeybee,

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;

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear the 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 heart's core.

A pity beyond all telling

Is hid in the heart of love:

The folk who are buying and selling,

The clouds on their journey above,

The cold wet winds ever blowing,

And the shadowy hazel grove

Where mouse-grey waters are flowing,

Threaten the head that I love.

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,

The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,

And all that famous harmony of leaves,

Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.

When you are old and gray 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.

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

For those red lips, with all their mournful pride,

Mournful that no new wonder may betide,

Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,

And Usna's children died.

We and the labouring world are passing by:

Amid men's souls, that waver and give place

Like the pale waters in their wintry race,

Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,

Lives on this lonely face.

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:

Before you were, or any hearts to beat,

Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;

He made the world to be a grassy road

Before her wandering feet.

I would be ignorant as the dawn

That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach

Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;

I would be— for no knowledge is worth a straw—

Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old.

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume

The entire combustible world in one small room

As though dried straw, and if we turn about

The bare chimney is gone black out

Because the work had finished in that flare.

Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,

As ’twere all life’s epitome.

What made us dream that he could comb grey hair?

I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind

That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind

All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved

Or boyish intellect approved,

With some appropriate commentary on each;

Until imagination brought

A fitter welcome; but a thought

Of that late death took all my heart for speech.

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

My county is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public men, nor cheering 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.

I know what wages beauty gives,

How hard a life her servant lives,

Yet praise the winters gone:

There is not a fool can call me friend,

And I may dine at journey’s end

With Landor and with Donne.

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?

When have I last looked on

The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies

Of the dark leopards of the moon?

All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,

For all their broom-sticks and their tears,

Their angry tears, are gone.

I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

Hands, do what you’re bid:

Bring the balloon of the mind

That bellies and drags in the wind

Into its narrow shed.

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind

And lost the old nonchalance of the hand;

Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush,

We are but critics, or but half create,

Timid, entangled, empty and abashed,

Lacking the countenance of our friends.

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

Alone, important and wise,

And lifts to the changing moon

His changing eyes.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,

The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,

The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,

Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

And God stands winding His lonely horn,

And time and the world are ever in flight;

And love is less kind than the grey twilight,

And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with the golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,

Folk dance like a wave of the sea.

More W. B. Yeats Quotes