William Butler Yeats

We have cried in our despair That men desert, For some trivial affair Or noisy, insolent sport, Beauty that we have won From bitterest hours; Yet we, had we walked within Those topless towers

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

Bird sighs for the air, Thought for I know not where, For the womb the seed sighs. Now sinks the same rest On mind, on nest, On straining thighs.

Cumhal called out, bending his head, Till Dathi came and stood, With a blink in his eyes, at the cave-mouth, Between the wind and the wood. And Cumhal said, bending his knees, ‘I have

One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.

There is a queen in China, or maybe it’s in Spain, And birthdays and holidays such praises can be heard Of her unblemished lineaments, a whiteness with no stain, That she might be that

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.

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

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the

Old fathers, great-grandfathers, Rise as kindred should. If ever lover’s loneliness Came where you stood, Pray that Heaven protect us That protect your blood. The mountain throws a shadow, Thin is the moon’s horn;

Dry timber under that rich foliage, At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood, Too old for a man’s love I stood in rage Imagining men. Imagining that I could A greater with a lesser

We should be hidden from their eyes, Being but holy shows And bodies broken like a thorn Whereon the bleak north blows, To think of buried Hector And that none living knows. The women

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

There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind: We, too, had good attendance once, Hearers and hearteners of

Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania, In their bridal sleep under a Cromlech. We who are old, old and gay, O so old! Thousands of years, thousands of years, If

We sat under an old thorn-tree And talked away the night, Told all that had been said or done Since first we saw the light, And when we talked of growing up Knew that

Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light; Until a curlew cried and in the luminous

I 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.

Acquaintance; companion; One dear brilliant woman; The best-endowed, the elect, All by their youth undone, All, all, by that inhuman Bitter glory wrecked. But I have straightened out Ruin, wreck and wrack; I toiled

The cat went here and there And the moon spun round like a top, And the nearest kin of the moon, The creeping cat, looked up. Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon, For, wander

I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake, Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white; The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night, The East her hidden joy before the morning

I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and histories, To cut and sew,

A cursing rogue with a merry face, A bundle of rags upon a crutch, Stumbled upon that windy place Called Cruachan, and it was as much As the one sturdy leg could do To

Three Voices [together]. Hurry to bless the hands that play, The mouths that speak, the notes and strings, O masters of the glittering town! O! lay the shrilly trumpet down, Though drunken with the

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. When all that

A man I praise that once in Tara’s Hals Said to the woman on his knees, ‘Lie still. My hundredth year is at an end. I think That something is about to happen, I

Sang Solomon to Sheba, And kissed her dusky face, ‘All day long from mid-day We have talked in the one place, All day long from shadowless noon We have gone round and round In

You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young; What else have I to spur me into song?

There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend, And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming, Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming And humming Sands, where windy surges wend: And he

You ask what – I have found, and far and wide I go: Nothing but Cromwell’s house and Cromwell’s murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall

Now must I these three praise Three women that have wrought What joy is in my days: One because no thought, Nor those unpassing cares, No, not in these fifteen Many-times-troubled years, Could ever

How should the world be luckier if this house, Where passion and precision have been one Time out of mind, became too ruinous To breed the lidleSs eye that loves the sun? And the

I dreamed as in my bed I lay, All night’s fathomless wisdom come, That I had shorn my locks away And laid them on Love’s lettered tomb: But something bore them out of sight

I meditate upon a swallow’s flight, Upon a aged woman and her house, A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night Although that western cloud is luminous, Great works constructed there in nature’s spite For

I A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence. I start

Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn’d? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned? I could have warned you; but you are young, So

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

Like the moon her kindness is, If kindness I may call What has no comprehension in’t, But is the same for all As though my sorrow were a scene Upon a painted wall. So

What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone?

In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;

Picture and book remain, An acre of green grass For air and exercise, Now strength of body goes; Midnight, an old house Where nothing stirs but a mouse. My temptation is quiet. Here at

The island dreams under the dawn And great boughs drop tranquillity; The peahens dance on a smooth lawn, A parrot sways upon a tree, Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea. Here

I I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, I sought it daily for six weeks or so. Maybe at last, being but a broken man, I must be satisfied with my

Although I shelter from the rain Under a broken tree, My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me. Though lads are making

I On the grey rock of Cashel the mind’s eye Has called up the cold spirits that are born When the old moon is vanished from the sky And the new still hides her

The true faith discovered was When painted panel, statuary. Glass-mosaic, window-glass, Amended what was told awry By some peasant gospeller; Swept the Sawdust from the floor Of that working-carpenter. Miracle had its playtime where

I Now that we’re almost settled in our house I’ll name the friends that cannot sup with us Beside a fire of turf in th’ ancient tower, And having talked to some late hour

An old man cocked his car upon a bridge; He and his friend, their faces to the South, Had trod the uneven road. Their hoots were soiled, Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape;

He stood among a crowd at Dromahair; His heart hung all upon a silken dress, And he had known at last some tenderness, Before earth took him to her stony care; But when a

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: But

I am tired of cursing the Bishop, (Said Crazy Jane) Nine books or nine hats Would not make him a man. I have found something worse To meditate on. A King had some beautiful

Although you hide in the ebb and flow Of the pale tide when the moon has set, The people of coming days will know About the casting out of my net, And how you

I admit the briar Entangled in my hair Did not injure me; My blenching and trembling, Nothing but dissembling, Nothing but coquetry. I long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill Whereby the haystack – and

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

(Imitated from Ronsard) Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case. 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

I met the Bishop on the road And much said he and I. ‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now, Those veins must soon be dry; Live in a heavenly mansion, Not in some

Hunchback. Stand up and lift your hand and bless A man that finds great bitterness In thinking of his lost renown. A Roman Caesar is held down Under this hump. Saint. God tries each

I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde, Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle, Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while; Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown a

That lover of a night Came when he would, Went in the dawning light Whether I would or no; Men come, men go; All things remain in God. Banners choke the sky; Men-at-arms tread;

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till stars are beginning to blink

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

That crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Her soul in division from itself Climbing, falling She knew not where, Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, Her knee-cap broken,

Fergus. This whole day have I followed in the rocks, And you have changed and flowed from shape to shape, First as a raven on whose ancient wings Scarcely a feather lingered, then you

This night has been so strange that it seemed As if the hair stood up on my head. From going-down of the sun I have dreamed That women laughing, or timid or wild, In

She that but little patience knew, From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers’ touch

Be you still, be you still, trembling heart; Remember the wisdom out of the old days: Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways,

If you, that have grown old, were the first dead, Neither catalpa tree nor scented lime Should hear my living feet, nor would I tread Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of

I That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees – Those dying generations – at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or

A storm-beaten old watch-tower, A blind hermit rings the hour. All-destroying sword-blade still Carried by the wandering fool. Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade, Beauty and fool together laid.

I Around me the images of thirty years: An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side; Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars, Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride; Kevin O’Higgins’ countenance that wears A

Time drops in decay, Like a candle burnt out, And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day; What one in the rout Of the fire-born moods Has fallen away?

‘Would it were anything but merely voice!’ The No King cried who after that was King, Because he had not heard of anything That balanced with a word is more than noise; Yet Old

I Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath. Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night; The body calls it death, The heart remorse. But if these be

Bolt and bar the shutter, For the foul winds blow: Our minds are at their best this night, And I seem to know That everything outside us is Mad as the mist and snow.

Who talks of Plato’s spindle; What set it whirling round? Eternity may dwindle, Time is unwound, Dan and Jerry Lout Change their loves about. However they may take it, Before the thread began I

Sang old Tom the lunatic That sleeps under the canopy: ‘What change has put my thoughts astray And eyes that had s-o keen a sight? What has turned to smoking wick Nature’s pure unchanging

My dear, my dear, I know More than another What makes your heart beat so; Not even your own mother Can know it as I know, Who broke my heart for her When the

Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated

I bade, because the wick and oil are spent And frozen are the channels of the blood, My discontented heart to draw content From beauty that is cast out of a mould In bronze,

I walked among the seven woods of Coole: Shan-walla, where a willow-hordered pond Gathers the wild duck from the winter dawn; Shady Kyle-dortha; sunnier Kyle-na-no, Where many hundred squirrels are as happy As though

May God be praised for woman That gives up all her mind, A man may find in no man A friendship of her kind That covers all he has brought As with her flesh

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; Have you not heard that

A man came slowly from the setting sun, To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun, And said, ‘I am that swineherd whom you bid Go watch the road between the wood and tide, But

The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand, Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand; Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and

Though you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time’s bitter flood will

I Blessed be this place, More blessed still this tower; A bloody, arrogant power Rose out of the race Uttering, mastering it, Rose like these walls from these Storm-beaten cottages – In mockery I

Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon’s pot-bellied I get a laughing fit, For that old Madge comes down the lane, A stone upon her

A doll in the doll-maker’s house Looks at the cradle and bawls: ‘That is an insult to us.’ But the oldest of all the dolls, Who had seen, being kept for show, Generations of

I Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side. II Where got I that truth? Out of a medium’s mouth. Out of nothing it came, Out

Come gather round me, Parnellites, And praise our chosen man; Stand upright on your legs awhile, Stand upright while you can, For soon we lie where he is laid, And he is underground; Come

A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.

They must to keep their certainty accuse All that are different of a base intent; Pull down established honour; hawk for news Whatever their loose fantasy invent And murmur it with bated breath, as

Come, let me sing into your ear; Those dancing days are gone, All that silk and satin gear; Crouch upon a stone, Wrapping that foul body up In as foul a rag: I carry

Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all; Many times he died, Many times rose again. A great man in his pride Confronting murderous men

God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage And on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled, No table or chair or stool not simple enough For shepherd lads in Galilee; and grant That

Being out of heart with government I took a broken root to fling Where the proud, wayward squirrel went, Taking delight that he could spring; And he, with that low whinnying sound That is

‘Although I’d lie lapped up in linen A deal I’d sweat and little earn If I should live as live the neighbours,’ Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne; ‘Stretch bones till the daylight come On

‘In our time the destiny of man prevents its meanings In political terms.’ Thomas Mann. How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?

I wander by the edge Of this desolate lake Where wind cries in the sedge: Until the axle break That keeps the stars in their round, And hands hurl in the deep The banners

There was a green branch hung with many a bell When her own people ruled this tragic Eire; And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery, A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell. It

Saddle and ride, I heard a man say, Out of Ben Bulben and Knocknarea, What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower? All those tragic characters ride But turn from Rosses’ crawling tide,

He. Never until this night have I been stirred. The elaborate starlight throws a reflection On the dark stream, Till all the eddies gleam; And thereupon there comes that scream From terrified, invisible beast

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 fade and flee; And the flame of the

Would I could cast a sad on the water Where many a king has gone And many a king’s daughter, And alight at the comely trees and the lawn, The playing upon pipes and

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

Stretch towards the moonless midnight of the trees, As though that hand could reach to where they stand, And they but famous old upholsteries Delightful to the touch; tighten that hand As though to

I Under the Great Comedian’s tomb the crowd. A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown About the sky; where that is clear of cloud Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down; What shudders run

Do not because this day I have grown saturnine Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought Because I have no other youth, can make me pine; For how should I forget the wisdom

A most astonishing thing Seventy years have I lived; (Hurrah for the flowers of Spring, For Spring is here again.) Seventy years have I lived No ragged beggar-man, Seventy years have I lived, Seventy

‘What do you make so fair and bright?’ ‘I make the cloak of Sorrow: O lovely to see in all men’s sight Shall be the cloak of Sorrow, In all men’s sight.’ ‘What do

The moments passed as at a play; I had the wisdom love brings forth; I had my share of mother-wit, And yet for all that I could say, And though I had her praise

The angels are stooping Above your bed; They weary of trooping With the whimpering dead. God’s laughing in Heaven To see you so good; The Sailing Seven Are gay with His mood. I sigh

When you and my true lover meet And he plays tunes between your feet. Speak no evil of the soul, Nor think that body is the whole, For I that am his daylight lady

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

(After reading ‘The Forged Casement Diaries’ by Dr. Maloney) I say that Roger Casement Did what he had to do. He died upon the gallows, But that is nothing new. Afraid they might be

Epilogue to “A Vision’ MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell And may a lesser bell sound through the room; And it is All Souls’ Night, And two long glasses brimmed with

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. I knew that horse-play, knew

Shepherd. That cry’s from the first cuckoo of the year. I wished before it ceased. Goatherd. Nor bird nor beast Could make me wish for anything this day, Being old, but that the old

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

O what to me the little room That was brimmed up with prayer and rest; He bade me out into the gloom, And my breast lies upon his breast. O what to me my

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these 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

A certain poet in outlandish clothes Gathered a crowd in some Byzantine lane, Talked1 of his country and its people, sang To some stringed instrument none there had seen, A wall behind his back,

Here is fresh matter, poet, Matter for old age meet; Might of the Church and the State, Their mobs put under their feet. O but heart’s wine shall run pure, Mind’s bread grow sweet.

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.

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

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.

This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands. Once he lived a schoolmaster With a stark, denying look; A string of

The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to call:

King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen He had outridden his war-wasted men That with empounded cattle trod the mire, And where beech-trees had mixed a

God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone; From all that makes a wise old man That can be praised

Edain came out of Midhir’s hill, and lay Beside young Aengus in his tower of glass, Where time is drowned in odour-laden winds And Druid moons, and murmuring of boughs, And sleepy boughs, and

I I saw a staring virgin stand Where holy Dionysus died, And tear the heart out of his side. And lay the heart upon her hand And bear that beating heart away; Of Magnus

The First. My great-grandfather spoke to Edmund Burke In Grattan’s house. The Second. My great-grandfather shared A pot-house bench with Oliver Goldsmith once. The Third. My great-grandfather’s father talked of music, Drank tar-water with

Five-and-twenty years have gone Since old William pollexfen Laid his strong bones down in death By his wife Elizabeth In the grey stone tomb he made. And after twenty years they laid In that

I have old women’s secrets now That had those of the young; Madge tells me what I dared not think When my blood was strong, And what had drowned a lover once Sounds like

The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare Through the hollow of an ear; Wings beating about the room; The terror of all terrors that I bore The Heavens in my womb. Had I

I swayed upon the gaudy stem 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

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide; The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed, Who cast round Fergus

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

Overcome O bitter sweetness, Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl The rich man and his affairs, The fat flocks and the fields’ fatness, Mariners, rough harvesters; Overcome Gods upon Parnassus; Overcome the

Hidden by old age awhile In masker’s cloak and hood, Each hating what the other loved, Face to face we stood: ‘That I have met with such,’ said he, ‘Bodes me little good.’ ‘Let

I found that ivory image there Dancing with her chosen youth, But when he wound her coal-black hair As though to strangle her, no scream Or bodily movement did I dare, Eyes under eyelids

There is grey in your hair. Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath When you are passing; But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing Because it was your prayer Recovered him upon

I There all the golden codgers lay, There the silver dew, And the great water sighed for love, And the wind sighed too. Man-picker Niamh leant and sighed By Oisin on the grass; There

We sat together at one summer’s end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it

ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land Among the dead, told to each a story of the other’s death, so

Come play with me; Why should you run Through the shaking tree As though I’d a gun To strike you dead? When all I would do Is to scratch your head And let you

Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled Above the tide of hours, trouble the air, And God’s bell buoyed to be the water’s care; While

‘Though to my feathers in the wet, I have stood here from break of day. I have not found a thing to eat, For only rubbish comes my way. Am I to live on

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice, And thereupon imagination and heart were driven So wild that every casual thought of

Sing of the O’Rahilly, Do not deny his right; Sing a ‘the’ before his name; Allow that he, despite All those learned historians, Established it for good; He wrote out that word himself, He

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, And dream about the great and their pride; They have spoken against you everywhere, But weigh this song with the great and their pride; I made it

Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead, Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade, The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night, That we descant and yet again descant Upon

Because I am mad about women I am mad about the hills,’ Said that wild old wicked man Who travels where God wills. ‘Not to die on the straw at home. Those hands to

‘Put off that mask of burning gold With emerald eyes.’ ‘O no, my dear, you make so bold To find if hearts be wild and wise, And yet not cold.’ ‘I would but find

O bid me mount and sail up there Amid the cloudy wrack, For peg and Meg and Paris’ love That had so straight a back, Are gone away, and some that stay Have changed

The lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much Struggling for an image on the track Of the whirling Zodiac. Scarce did he my body touch, Scarce sank he from the west Or

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.

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 dog that praised his fleas?

What sort of man is coming To lie between your feet? What matter, we are but women. Wash; make your body sweet; I have cupboards of dried fragrance. I can strew the sheet. The

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

Now, man of croziers, shadows called our names And then away, away, like whirling flames; And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound, The youth and lady and the deer and hound; ‘Gaze no more

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

I went out alone To sing a song or two, My fancy on a man, And you know who. Another came in sight That on a stick relied To hold himself upright; I sat

You waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play, Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart; In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the

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

Toil and grow rich, What’s that but to lie With a foul witch And after, drained dry, To be brought To the chamber where Lies one long sought With despair?

I bring you with reverent hands The books of my numberless dreams, White woman that passion has worn As the tide wears the dove-grey sands, And with heart more old than the horn That

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

Undying love to buy I wrote upon The corners of this eye All wrongs done. What payment were enough For undying love? I broke my heart in two So hard I struck. What matter?