Byzantium
The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night walkers’ song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All
Friends
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
Crazy Jane Reproved
I care not what the sailors say: All those dreadful thunder-stones, All that storm that blots the day Can but show that Heaven yawns; Great Europa played the fool That changed a lover for
Upon A House Shaken By The Land Agitation
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
Anashuya And Vijaya
A little Indian temple in the Golden Age. Around it a garden; Around that the forest. Anashuya, the young priestess, kneeling Within the temple. Anashuya. Send peace on all the lands and flickering Corn.
Her Dream
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
The Ragged Wood
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
Coole Park, 1929
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
To Be Carved On A Stone At Thoor Ballylee
I, the poet William Yeats, With old mill boards and sea-green slates, And smithy work from the Gort forge, Restored this tower for my wife George; And may these characters remain When all is
Two Songs Of A Fool
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
Two Songs Rewritten For The Tune's Sake
I My Paistin Finn is my sole desire, And I am shrunken to skin and bone, For all my heart has had for its hire Is what I can whistle alone and alone. Oro,
Two Years Later
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
Old Tom Again
Things out of perfection sail, And all their swelling canvas wear, Nor shall the self-begotten fail Though fantastic men suppose Building-yard and stormy shore, Winding-sheet and swaddling – clothes.
The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water
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
The Valley Of The Black Pig
The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes, And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears. We