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
Who can tell the dancer from the dance?
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?
Come swish around, my pretty punk,And keep me dancing stillThat I may stay a sober manAlthough I drink my fill.
When two close kindred meet What better than call a dance?.
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!
And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance.
When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.
You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?
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.