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Now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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
Lasts
Rounds
Bethlehem
Last
Twenty
Rocking
Born
Twenties
Cradle
Come
Towards
Centuries
Hour
Nightmare
Century
Beast
Sleep
Rough
Vexed
Hours
Round
Stony

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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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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I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch.
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I had this thought a while ago, My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land. And I grew weary of the sun
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One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a mans eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious,of many things we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away.
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... What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?
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For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
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An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?
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The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about.
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Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.
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Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
William Butler Yeats
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I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
William Butler Yeats
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How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.
William Butler Yeats
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And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for a kiss.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon Ireland's history in their lineaments trace think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats
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Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk
William Butler Yeats
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Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
William Butler Yeats
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And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew.
William Butler Yeats