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Speech after long silence it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead . . . That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom young We loved each other and were ignorant.

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
Loved
Bodily
Wisdom
Theme
Upon
Ignorant
Song
Supreme
Art
Lovers
Young
Speech
Right
Silence
Decrepitude
Long
Dead
Estranged

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Love comes in at the eye.
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My wretched dragon is perplexed.
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Come, fix upon me that accusing eye. I thirst for accusation. All that was sung. All that was said in Ireland is a lie Breed out of the contagion of the throng, Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.
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Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns, Amid the rustle of his planted hills, Life overflows without ambitious pains And rains down life until the basin spills, And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains As though to choose whatever shape it wills.
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If soul my look and body touch, Which is the more blest?
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Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade.
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even The bed of love, that in the imagination Had seemed to be the giver of all peace, Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting, And as soon finished.
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Life is a journey up a spiral staircase as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive we go both round and upward.
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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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The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.
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All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
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The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
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I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone.
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I bear a burden that might well try Men that do all by rule, And what can I That am a wandering-witted fool But pray to God that He ease My great responsibilities?
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For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.
William Butler Yeats
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Style, personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.
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I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem.
William Butler Yeats
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My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.
William Butler Yeats
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Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
William Butler Yeats
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All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
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