William Butler
William Butler
Multi-instrumentalist for the band Arcade Fire who plays bass, synth, guitar, and percussion. He has also worked on movie soundtracks, like the one for Her.
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth6 October 1982
girl hands play
On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw, A Buddha, hand at rest, Hand lifted up that blest; And right between these two a girl at play That, it may be, had danced her life away....
song eye naked
I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.
small-rooms may world
Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.
drama rome hands
Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?
sweet hard-work together
For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.
sleep wine men
While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity....
art brain world
Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.
heaven tragedy scene
Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
doors air southern
There are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.
men shade floats
Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade...
believe brain body
We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.
theme
What can I but enumerate old themes?
children sleep storm
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on.
moving long silence
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.