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
Did that play of mine send outCertain men the English shot?
I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering-witted foolBut pray to God that He easeMy great responsibilities?
I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots
Poor men have grown to be rich men,And rich men grown to be poor again,And I am running to Paradise.
For men improve with the years;And yet, and yet,Is this my dream, or the truth?
One man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.
Though logic-choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy....
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind....
A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.
The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!
A drunkard is a dead man And all dead men are drunk.
Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?
Test every work of intellect or faith, And everything that your own hands have wrought And call those works extravagance of breath That are not suited for such men as come Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.