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
When we are young we long to tread a way none have trod before
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.
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;All wear the carpet with their shoes;All think what other people think;All know the man their neighbour knows,Lord, what would they sayDid their Catullus walk that way?
Swift has sailed into his rest;Savage indignation thereCannot lacerate his breast.
Bred to a harder thingThan Triumph, turn awayAnd like a laughing stringWhereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone,Be secret and exult,Because of all things knownThat is most difficult.
Of conflicts with others we make retorica, of conflicts with ourselves poetry
He knows death to the bone --Man has created death.
Come swish around, my pretty punk,And keep me dancing stillThat I may stay a sober manAlthough I drink my fill.