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
valentines-day time moon
And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.
flower heart rose
I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem.
uplifting dream spiritual
As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.
wings purple evening
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.
feet three fairy
Fairies in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet high.
faces spit
I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me
faces knows
What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
blessed self common
The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all
holiday gay wind
Come let us mock at the good That fancied goodness might be gay, And sick of solitude Might proclaim a holiday: Wind shrieked and where are they?
halloween lakes secret
I know of the leafy paths that the witches take Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool, And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake....
flames tree half
A tree there is that from its topmost bough Is half all glittering flame and half all green Abounding foliage moistened with the dew; And half is half and yet is all the scene; And half and half consume what they renew....
death sex two
I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood - sex and the dead.
truth war thinking
I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
journey men thinking
A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must needs think and think.