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That toil of growing up The ignominy of boyhood the distress Of boyhood changing into man The unfinished man and his pain.

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
Boyhood
Unfinished
Distress
Toil
Changing
Growing
Pain
Men
Ignominy

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Fairies in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet high.
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Man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality.
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Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon's pot-bellied I get a laughing fit.
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O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.
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If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.
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What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms?
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I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs, Those undreamt accidents that have made me Seeing that Fame has perished this long while, Being but a part of ancient ceremony Notorious, till all my priceless things Are but a post the passing dogs defile.
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The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves they must take their pleasure raw they haven't the time to cook it.
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Though leaves are many, the root is one Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth.
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My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me.
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By logic and reason we die hourly by imagination we live.
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How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!
William Butler Yeats
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Bid imagination run / Much on the Great Questioner / What He can question, what if questioned I / Can with a fitting confidence reply.
William Butler Yeats
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Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns? I have been changed to a hound with one red ear I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns.
William Butler Yeats
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Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.
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Poetry and music I have banished, But the stupidity Of root, shoot, blossom or clay Makes no demand. I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand.
William Butler Yeats
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One man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
William Butler Yeats
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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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When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed.
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One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass Cannot keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.
William Butler Yeats