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
We had fed the heart on fantasies,The heart's grown brutal from the fare.
You have to die because no soul has passedThe heavenly threshold since you have opened school,But grass grows there, and rust upon the hinge;And they are lonely that must keep the watch.
Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die
No expectation fails there,No pleasing habit ends,No man grows old, no girl grows cold,But friends walk by friends.
No expectation fails there, No pleasing habit ends, No man grows old, no girl grows cold, But friends walk by friends.
Poor men have grown to be rich men,And rich men grown to be poor again,And I am running to Paradise.
Oh, who could have foretoldThat the heart grows old?
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
TOIL and grow rich, what's that but to lie with a foul witch and after, drained dry, to be brought to the chamber where lies one long sought with despair.
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.
That toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.
BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there;
What shall I do for pretty girlsNow my old bawd is dead?