William Butler
William Butler
Multi-instrumentalist for the band Arcade Fire who plays bass, synth, guitar, and percussion. He has also worked on movie soundtracks, like the one for Her.
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth6 October 1982
dream lost-love fall
I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood; And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes....
wings giving heaven
God spreads the heavens above us like great wings, And gives a little round of deeds and days.
dream artist despair
What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?
struggle writing world
For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.
goodbye children heart
To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour Forbidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye.
writing men land
No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.
powerful heart destiny
If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.
small-rooms may world
Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.
life men long
And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place....
life lost-love fool
Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind.
life pain rain
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 rains As though to choose whatever shape it wills....
life night garden
Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.
life hope art
What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live...?
life men soul
Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul