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I Sing what was lost and dread what was won, / I walk in a battle fought over again.
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
Fought
Sing
Battle
Walk
Walks
Winning
Lost
Dread
More quotes by William Butler Yeats
Test every work of intellect or faith and everything that your own hands have wrought.
William Butler Yeats
Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he will be thinking about love til the stars run away and the shadows eaten the moon.
William Butler Yeats
Chaunt in his ear delusions magical, That he may fight the horses of the sea. The Druids took them to their mystery, And chaunted for three days.
William Butler Yeats
Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.
William Butler Yeats
There is only one romance the Soul's.
William Butler Yeats
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.
William Butler Yeats
In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time Half dead at the top.
William Butler Yeats
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
William Butler Yeats
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
I broke my heart in two So hard I struck. What matter? for I know That out of rock, Out of a desolate source, Love leaps upon its course.
William Butler Yeats
Maybe the bride-bed brings despair, For each an imagined image brings And finds a real image there...
William Butler Yeats
And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey.
William Butler Yeats
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.
William Butler Yeats
How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?
William Butler Yeats
You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?
William Butler Yeats
Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.
William Butler Yeats
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fadeand flee And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
William Butler Yeats
Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.
William Butler Yeats
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
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam, Our arms are waving, our lips are apart.
William Butler Yeats