Quote

Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie.

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
Best
Spring
Must
Prove
Thing
Loss
Love
Beauty
Awaits
Dies
Lesser
Lying
Returning
True
Alter
Earth
Dressed

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All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
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Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.
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Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
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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.
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Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?
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Life is a journey up a spiral staircase as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive we go both round and upward.
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The Bishop has a skin, God knows, Wrinkled like the foot of a goose, (All find safety in the tomb.) Nor can he hide in holy black The heron's hunch upon his back, But a birch-tree stood my Jack.
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Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.
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Farewell - farewell, For I am weary of the weight of time.
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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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All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay.
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.
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Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.
William Butler Yeats
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BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there.
William Butler Yeats
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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
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Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.
William Butler Yeats
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What shall I do with this absurdity- O heart, O troubled heart-this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.
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I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit.
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For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
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Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep. . . .
William Butler Yeats