William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeatswas an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth13 June 1865
CitySandymount, Ireland
CountryIreland
A woman can be proud and stiffWhen on love intent;But Love has pitched his mansion inThe place of excrement;For nothing can be sole or wholeThat has not been rent.
A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.
I sigh that kiss you,For I must ownThat I shall miss youWhen you have grown.
I sigh that kiss you, For I must own That I shall miss you When you have grown.
The things that have been told us in our childhoodAre not so fragile.
A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.
A mermaid found a swimming lad,Picked him for her own,Pressed her body to his body,Laughed; and plunging downForgot in cruel happinessThat even lovers drown.
Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.
And therefore I have sailed the seas and comeTo the holy city of Byzantium.
Out of Ireland have we come. Great hatred, little room, Maimed us at the start.
I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots
Style, personality -- deliberately adopted and therefore a mask -- is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.
Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,Amid the rustle of his planted hills,Life overflows without ambitious pains;And rains down life until the basin spills,And mounts more dizzy high the more it rainsAs though to choose whatever shape it wills. . . .