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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.

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
Dream
Red
Troy
May
Lips
Transience
Children
Died
Mournful
Like
Pride
Gleam
Wonder
Dreamed
Beauty
Funeral
High
Passes
Away
Passed
Betide

More quotes by William Butler Yeats

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O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.
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yet it seems Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind, Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams, But the torn petals strew the garden plot And there's but common greenness after that.
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What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live...?
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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.
William Butler Yeats
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I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
William Butler Yeats
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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
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And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place.
William Butler Yeats
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The hare grows old as she plays in the sun And gazes around her with eyes of brightness Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done She limps along in an aged whiteness.
William Butler Yeats
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There are a few of the open-air spirits the more domestic of their tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.
William Butler Yeats
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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
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Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.
William Butler Yeats
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O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause, Being for a woman's sake.
William Butler Yeats
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One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass Cannot keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.
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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Evil comes to us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
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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I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.
William Butler Yeats
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If what I say resonates with you, it's merely because we're branches of the same tree.
William Butler Yeats
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Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
William Butler Yeats
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I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.
William Butler Yeats