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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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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
Eye
Poets
Labouring
Perfect
Clouds
Dimmed
Woman
Build
Overthrown
Dream
Poet
Eyelids
Women
Poetry
Gaze
Days
Cloud
Beauty
Rhyme
Eyes
Pale

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary.
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Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
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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.
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I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.
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Now must we sing and sing the best we can, But first you must be told your character: Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.
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The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne.
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What can I but enumerate old themes?
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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.
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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
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The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.
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The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
William Butler Yeats
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A passion-driven exultant man sings out Sentences that he has never thought.
William Butler Yeats
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Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare.
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His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
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The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.
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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The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world no longer a dream.
William Butler Yeats
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My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground. Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.
William Butler Yeats
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But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good.
William Butler Yeats