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
I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.
What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.
I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit...
Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.
All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.
The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.
Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.
Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned...
What can be explained is not poetry.
The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.