Quotes from W.B. Yeats

Ah, do not mourn,' he said, 'That we are tired, for other loves await us; Hate on and love through unrepining hours. Before us lies eternity; our souls Are love, and a continual farewell.

Its quarrel is not with the past, but with the present, where its elders are so obviously powerful, and no cause seems lost if it seem to threaten that power.

Barach. There, he is down! He is up again! He is going out into the deep water.

Seanchan (pronounced Shanahan), Chief Poet of Ireland.

I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them

I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon The golden apples of the sun.

King, whether you did right or wrong in this Let the King say, for all that I need say Is that there's nothing that cries out for death In the withholding of that ancient right

every word was audible and expressive, as the words in a song were always, as I think, before music grew too proud to be the garment of words, flowing and changing with the flowing and changing of their energies.

We sat as silent as a stone, We knew, though she'd not said a word, That even the best of love must die, And had been savagely undone Were it not that Love upon the cry Of a most ridiculous little bird Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.

and I heard a thing coming flop-flop up the stairs like an eel, and squealing. It went to all the doors. It could not get in where I was. I would have sent it through the universe like a flash of fire. There

Round these men stories tended to group themselves, sometimes deserting more ancient heroes for the purpose. Round poets have they gathered especially, for poetry in Ireland has always been mysteriously connected with magic.

An aimless joy is a pure joy

Some mediæval straw-splitting about the nature of the Trinity, which is only useful to-day to show how many things are unimportant to us, which once shook the world

To know the mountain and the valley have grieved May be a quiet thought [...]

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.

When people are good the world likes them and takes possession of them, and so eternity comes through people who are not good or who have been forgotten. Perhaps Christianity was good and the world liked it, so now it is going away and the immortals are beginning to awake.

I would be ignorant as the dawn That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses; I would be—for no knowledge is worth a straw Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

when, if the tale's true, The Pestle of the moon That pounds up all anew Brings me to birth again To find what once I had And know what once I have known, Until I am driven mad

Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.

But soon a tear-drop started up, For aimless joy had made me stop Beside the little lake To watch a white gull take A bit of bread thrown up into the air; Now gyring down and perning there He splashed where an absurd Portly green-pated bird Shook off the water from his back; Being no more demoniac A stupid happy creature Could rouse my whole nature.

The Merrow, of if you write it in the Irish, Moruadh or Murúghach, from muir, sea, and oigh, a maid, is not uncommon, they say, on the wilder coasts. The fishermen do not like to see them, for it always means coming gales.

Whether to play, or to ride Those winds that clamour of approaching night.

Red is the color of magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times. The caps of fairies and magicians are well-nigh always red.

O bid me mount and sail up there Amid the cloudy wrack, For Peg and Meg and Paris' love That had so straight a back, Are gone away, and some that stay Have changed their silk for sack.