A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

I 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.

And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.

In dreams begins responsibility.

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young / And weep because I know all things now.

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.