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
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
O love is the crooked thing,There is nobody wise enoughTo find out all that is in it.
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 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.
One had a lovely face, and two or three had charm, but charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass cannot keep the form where the mountain hare has lain.
The hour of the waning of love has beset us,And weary and worn are our sad souls now;Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.
This melancholy London- I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.
Things said or done long years ago,Or things I did not do or sayBut thought that I might say or do,Weigh me down, and not a dayBut something is recalled,My conscience or my vanity appalled.
Things said or done long years ago, Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.
Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal;A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all.
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdainsAll that man is;All mere complexities,The fury and the mire of human veins.
I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough for a man and a woman to understand each other; and in this case to understand is to love.
Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot,Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!The beggars have changed places but the lash goes on.