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A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?

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
Men
Impure
Life
Drinks
Drop
Blind
Drink
Living
Live
Matter
Ditches

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Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand.
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A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement.
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I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes But when this soul, its body off Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.
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Words alone are certain good.
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We are fastened to a dying animal.
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We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.
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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.
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All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right.
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Man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality.
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The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.
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Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
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Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
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I would that there was nothing in the world But my beloved that night and day had perished, And all that is and all that is to be, All that is not the meeting of our lips.
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The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
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The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
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The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about.
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Boughs have their fruit and blossom At all times of the year Rivers are running over With red beer and brown beer.
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Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade.
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Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on.
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