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
Until the axle break That keeps the stars in their round, And hands hurl in the deep The banners of East and West, And the girdle of light is unbound, Your breast will not lie by the breast Of your beloved in sleep
When we are young we long to tread a way none have trod before
The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.
Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.
Out of Ireland have we come. Great hatred, little room, Maimed us at the start.
Others because you did not keepThat deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;Yet always when I look death in the face,When I clamber to the heights of sleep,Or when I grow excited with wine,Suddenly I meet your face.
It is not permitted to a man who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it. The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
Man can embody truth bet he cannot know it.
Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,Amid the rustle of his planted hills,Life overflows without ambitious pains;And rains down life until the basin spills,And mounts more dizzy high the more it rainsAs though to choose whatever shape it wills. . . .
That William BlakeWho beat upon the wallTill Truth obeyed his call.
I would mould a world of fire and dew.
Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
Irish poets, learn your trade,Sing whatever is well made.