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
All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other's, We were so much at one.
We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.
By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live.
All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest....
The pain others give passes away in their later kindness, but that of our own blunders, especially when they hurt our vanity, never passes away
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.
only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art.
Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled. Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.
Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.
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.
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.