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Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.
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
Satisfied
Gleam
Poet
Troubled
Beauty
Brief
Gone
Solitary
Mythological
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Mirror
Swan
Soul
Mirrors
Moralist
Life
Proof
Swans
More quotes by William Butler Yeats
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
But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love Of solitary beds, knew what they were, That passion could bring character enough And pressed at midnighht in some public place Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.
William Butler Yeats
Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.
William Butler Yeats
I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.
William Butler Yeats
The chief imagination of Christendom, Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind's eye than any face But that of Christ.
William Butler Yeats
The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.
William Butler Yeats
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
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
But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.
William Butler Yeats
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
William Butler Yeats
If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made.
William Butler Yeats
I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone.
William Butler Yeats
Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.
William Butler Yeats
I--love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb-- Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb.
William Butler Yeats
It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.
William Butler Yeats
Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
William Butler Yeats
While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity.
William Butler Yeats
I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.
William Butler Yeats
Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
William Butler Yeats
I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.
William Butler Yeats
