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The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.

William Butler Yeats

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William Butler Yeats
Age: 73 †
Born: 1865
Born: June 13
Died: 1939
Died: January 28
Astrologer
Mystic
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Scrooby
Nottinghamshire
W. B. Yeats
William Yeats
W.B. Yeats
Black
Tread
Great
Passings
Years
Passing
Time
God
Like
Behinds
World
Broken
Goads
Behind
Oxen
Feet
Yeast

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Many times man lives and dies Betweeen his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man die in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead
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only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art.
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Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare.
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The living can assist the imagination of the dead.
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Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.
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Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when the abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all: And after that there's nothing good Because the spring time has not come- Not know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb.
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But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good.
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People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals.
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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?
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An intellectual hatred is the worst.
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And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place.
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Maybe the bride-bed brings despair, For each an imagined image brings And finds a real image there...
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We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love
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All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
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The Father and His angelic hierarchy That made the magnitude and glory there Stood in the circuit of a needle's eye.
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But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love Of solitary beds, knew what they were, That passion could bring character enough And pressed at midnighht in some public place Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.
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Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way.
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The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
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We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.
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When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.
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