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