Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.
William Butler YeatsAs I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.
William Butler Yeats...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... "When You Are Old And Gray
William Butler YeatsNow as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.
William Butler YeatsWe 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.
William Butler YeatsOnly that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.
William Butler YeatsImagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
William Butler YeatsThe world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it.
William Butler YeatsThings said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.
William Butler YeatsI had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.
William Butler YeatsI am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch.
William Butler YeatsNor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.
William Butler YeatsIf what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we're branches of the same tree.
William Butler YeatsGrant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.
William Butler YeatsTurning 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.
William Butler YeatsI sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. 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 blessed and could bless.
William Butler YeatsFor how can you compete Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbour's eyes?
William Butler YeatsAnd many a poor man that has roved Loved and thought himself beloved From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
William Butler YeatsHow far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
William Butler YeatsLet the minor genius go his light way and enjoy his life - the great nature cannot so live, he is never really in holiday mood, even though he often plucks flowers by the wayside and ties them into knots and garlands like little children and lays out on a sunny morning.
William Butler YeatsLet us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.
William Butler YeatsO what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
William Butler YeatsHow can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?
William Butler YeatsO but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
William Butler YeatsI have no question: It is enough, I know what fixed the station Of star and cloud. And knowing all, I cry. . . .
William Butler YeatsHeaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
William Butler YeatsTHOUGH 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 rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes.
William Butler YeatsI would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.
William Butler Yeats