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 dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs, For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood; And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes....
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
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....
Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity....
All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay.
Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, With your harmonious choir Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, That my old care may cease....
Although our love is waning, let us stand by the lone border of the lake once more, together in that hour of gentleness. When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
THAT crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Her soul in division from itself Climbing, falling She knew not where, Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing Heroically lost, heroically found. No matter what disaster occurred She stood in desperate music wound, Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph Where the bales and the baskets lay No common intelligible sound But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold...
It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.
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.