Quote

The Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold, And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes, For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies, With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold.

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
Heart
Laughing
Ride
Cold
North
Cradles
Eyes
Fallen
Clap
Half
Wings
Wrought
Eye
Heavy
Eagle
Hands
Laugh
Eagles
Together
Gold
Cradle
Children
Close
Flies

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How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?
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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.
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The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man's image and his cry.
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An intellectual hate is the worst.
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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.
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Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.
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Now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while.
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What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.
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Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.
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Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.
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Fair and foul are near of kin And fair needs foul, I cried. My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied.
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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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What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?
William Butler Yeats
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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.
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Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
William Butler Yeats
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For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,”Here is the fiddler of Dooney!” / And dance like a wave of the sea.
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Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
William Butler Yeats
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Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
William Butler Yeats