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All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- The seeming needs of my fool-driven land Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil.

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
Comes
Fool
Toil
Hands
Youth
Accustomed
Nothing
Poetry
Distraction
Needs
Land
Craft
Readier
Things
Hand
Crafts
Tempt
Time
Face
Driven
Verse
Faces
Worse
Seeming
Woman
Poet
Verses

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes, The poets labouring all their days To build a perfect beauty in rhyme Are overthrown by a woman's gaze.
William Butler Yeats
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Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
William Butler Yeats
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We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.
William Butler Yeats
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So long as all is ordered for attack, and that alone, leaders will instinctively increase the number of enemies that they may give their followers something to do.
William Butler Yeats
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I sat on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away.
William Butler Yeats
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I thought it out this very day, Noon upon the clock, A man may put pretence away Who leans upon a stick, May sing, and sing until he drop, Whether to maid or hag.
William Butler Yeats
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style.
William Butler Yeats
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It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care.
William Butler Yeats
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Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.
William Butler Yeats
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How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?
William Butler Yeats
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Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
William Butler Yeats
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Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade.
William Butler Yeats
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That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.
William Butler Yeats
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I knew that I had seen, had seen at last That girl my unremembering nights hold fast Or else my dreams that fly If I should rub an eye, And yet in flying fling into my meat A crazy juice that makes the pulses beat.
William Butler Yeats
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Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.
William Butler Yeats
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The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.
William Butler Yeats
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Our words must seem to be inevitable.
William Butler Yeats
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No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love.
William Butler Yeats
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but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.
William Butler Yeats