Quotes from W.B. Yeats

Jonathan Swift made a soul for the gentlemen of this city by hating his neighbor as himself.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

Is this my dream, or the truth? O would that we had met When I had my burning youth; But I grow old among dreams, A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams.

They, with their wild music as of winds blowing in the reeds,[1] seemed to me the very inmost voice of Celtic sadness, and of Celtic longing for infinite things the world has never seen.

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.

The Wheel Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all; And after that there's nothing good Because the spring-time has not come -- Nor know what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb.

The last stroke of midnight dies. All day in the one chair From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged In rambling talk with an image of air: Vague memories, nothing but memories.

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, And give his own and take his own And rule in his own right; And though it loved in misery Close and cling so tight, There's not a bird of day that dare Extinguish that delight.

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little. 1893. II

He who made you bitter made you wise.

You will forget me soon. Oh dear one, hate me rather than forget.

Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.

it's a long lane that has no turning.

A couple of hours after Sunset Michael Robartes returned and told me that I would have to learn the steps of an exceedingly antique dance, because before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three times in a magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on which alone the transient and accidental could be broken, and the spirit set free.

The wandering earth herself may be Only a sudden flaming word, In clanging space a moment heard, Troubling the endless reverie. -from "The Song of the Happy Shepherd

For the good are always the merry, Save by an evil chance, And the merry love the fiddle, And the merry love to dance.

I Sing what was lost and dread what was won, I walk in a battle fought over again

every one is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt is a visionary without scratching.

For it is love that I am seeking for, But of a beautiful, unheard-of kind That is not in the world.

There is some Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all that he did and thought.

The woods of Arcady are dead, And over it their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Gray Truth is now her painted toy.

A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all; Many times he died, Many times rose again

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Thread softly because you tread on my dreams.