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
You think it horrible that lust and rageShould dance attendance upon my old age;They were not such a plague when I was young;What else have I to spur me into song?
I had a chair at every hearth, When no one turned to see, With 'Look at that old fellow there, 'And who may he be?
An age is the reversal of an age: When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone, We lived like men that watch a painted stage. What matter for the scene, the scene once gone: It had not touched our lives.
The hare grows old as she plays in the sun And gazes around her with eyes of brightness; Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done She limps along in an aged whiteness....
Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which....
Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.
What shall I do for pretty girlsNow my old bawd is dead?
I sigh that kiss you,For I must ownThat I shall miss youWhen you have grown.
I sigh that kiss you, For I must own That I shall miss you When you have grown.
It would need a great deal of wisdom to know what it is we want to know.
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.
An intellectual hatred is the worst,So let her think opinions are accursed.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born