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An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.

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
Soul
Stick
Demise
Thing
Dress
Louder
Every
Sticks
Aged
Men
Dresses
Coat
Sing
Elderly
Unless
Coats
Tattered
Upon
Mortal
Paltry
Hands
Mortals
Clap

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BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there.
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People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
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Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
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But I, being poor, have only my dreams I have spread my dreams under your feet Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
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I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
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Whatever flames upon the night Man's own resinous heart has fed.
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Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.
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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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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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No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.
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It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.
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For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
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O heart, we are old The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.
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But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.
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What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?
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All men live in suffering I know as few can know, Whether they take the upper road Or stay content on the low.
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I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.
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From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged / In rambling talk with an image of air: / Vague memories, nothing but memories.
William Butler Yeats
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When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side, The vinegar-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kedron stream.
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