More wisdom than I understand. But it reaches me without the latter.
“Of old the world
on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now
her painted toy.
(…)
Lest all thy
toiling only breeds
New dreams, new
dreams; there is not truth
Saving in thine
own heart.” (Yeats ‘The Song of the happy shepherd’, 2010, p.33).
“ And
then she:
‘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:
How far away the
stars seem, and how far
Is our first
kiss, and ah, how old my heart.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Ephemera, p.44).
“I will arise and
go now, and go to Innisfree,
(…)
And I shall have
a some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the
veils of the morning to where the crickets sings;
(…)
I will arise and
go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water
lapping with low sounds by the shore.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The lake isle of
Innisfree’, p.74).
“I sigh that kiss
you,
For I must own
That I shall miss
you
When you have
grown.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘A cradle song, p.75).
“Out-worn heart,
in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the
nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart,
again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart,
again in the dew of the morn.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Into the twilight, p.98).
“Though I am old
with wandering
Through hollow
lands and hilly lands,
I will find out
where she has gone,
And kiss her lips
and take her hands;
And walk among
long dappled grass,
And pluck till
time and times are done
The silver apples
of the moon,
The golden apples
of the sun.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The song of wandering Aengus’, p.99).
“When my arms
wrap you round I press
My heart upon the
loveliness
That has long
faded from the world.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘He remembers forgotten Beauty, p.103).
“Had I the
heavens’ embroidered cloths
Enwrought with
golden and silver light,
The blue and the
dim and the dark cloths
Of night and
light and the half-light,
I would spread
the cloths under your feet:
But I, being
poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my
dreams under your feet;
Tread softly
because you tread on my dreams.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘He wishes for the cloths of
heaven’, p.116).
“When I play on
my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a
wave of the sea.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The Fiddler of Dooney’, p.117).
“I cried when the
moon was murmuring to the birds:” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The Withering of the Boughs’,
p.125).
“Though leaves
are many, the root is one;
Through all the
lying days of my youth
I swayed my
leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither
into the truth.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The coming of wisdom with time’, p.145).
“Do men who least
desire get most,
Or get the most
who most desire?’
A beggar said,
‘They get the most
Whom man or devil
cannot tire.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The three beggars’, p.163).
“When have I last
looked on
The round green
eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark
leopards of the moon!
All the wild
witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their
broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry
tears, are gone.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Lines written in dejection’, p.207).
“Robartes:
Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon,
The full and the
moon’s dark and all the crescents,
Twenty-and-eight,
and yet but six-and-twenty
The cradles that
a man must needs be rocked in:
For there’s no
human life at the full or the dark.
From the first
crescent to the half, the dream
But summons to
adventure and the man
Is always happy
like a bird or a beast;
But while the
moon is rounding towards the full
He follows
whatever whim’s most difficult
Among whims not
impossible, and though scarred,
As with the
cat-o’-nine tails of the mind,
His body moulded
from within his body
Grows comlier,
Eleven pass, and then
Athena takes
Achilles by the hair,
Hector is in the
dust, Nietzsche is born
Because the
hero’s crescent is the twelfth.
And yet, twice
born, twice buried, grow he must,
Before the full
moon but sets the soul at war
In its own being,
and when that war’s begun
In its own being,
and when that war’s begun
There’s no muscle
in the arm, and after,
Under the frenzy
of the fourteenth moon,
The soul begins
to tremble into stillness,
To die into the
labyrinth of itself.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The phases of the moon’, p.230).
“Hearts with one
purpose alone
Through summer
and winter seem
Enchanted to a
stone
To trouble the
living stream.
(…)
The long-legged
moorhens dive,
And hens the
moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute
they live:
The stone’s in
the midst of all.
Too long a
sacrifice
Can make a stone
of the heart.
O when it may
suffice?” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Easter 1916’, p.251).
“Turning and
turning 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 of
all conviction, while the worst
Are full of
passionate intensity.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The second coming’, p.260).
“That is not
country for old men The young
In one another’s
arms, birds in the trees,
- Those dying
generations – at their song
The salmon-falls,
the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or
fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is
begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that
sensual music all neglect
Monument of
unageing intellect.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, p.267).
“What shall I do
with this absurdity –
O heart, O
troubled heart – this caricature,
Decrepit age that
has been tied to me
As to a dog’s
tail?” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The Tower’, p.268).
“Death and life
were not
Till man made up
the whole,
Made lock, stock
and barrel
Out of his bitter
soul,
Aye, sun, and
moon and star, all,
And further add
to that
That, being dead,
we rise,
Dream and so
create
Translunar
Paradise.
I have prepared
my peace
With learned
Italian things
And the proud
stones of Greece,
Poet’s imaginings
And memories of
the words of love,
Memories of the
words of women,
All those things
whereof
Man makes a
superhuman
Mirror-resembling
dream.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The Tower’, p.273).
“O what if
levelled lawns and graveled ways
Where slippered
Contemplation finds his ease
And Childhood a
delight or every sense,
But take our
greatness with our violence?” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Meditations in Times of Civil war,
p.276).
“… if our works could
But vanish with
our breath
That were a lucky
death,
For triumph can
but mar our solitude.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’, p.285).
“Come let us mock
the great
That had such
burdens on the mind
And toiled so
hard and late
To leave some
monument behind
Nor thought of
the levelling wind.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’, p.286).
“A prayer for my
Son
Bid a strong
ghost stand at the head
That my Michael
may sleep sound
Nor cry, nor turn
in the bed
Till his morning
meal come round;
And may departing
twilight keep
All dread afar till
morning’s back,
That his mother
may not lack
Her fill of
sleep.
Bid the ghost
have sword in fist:
Some there are,
for I avow
Such devilish
things exist,
Who have planned
his murder, for they know
Of some most
haughty deed or thought
That waits upon
his future days,
And would through
hatred of the bays
Bring that to
nought.
Though You can
fashion everything
From nothing
every day, and teach
The morning stars
to sing,
You have lacked
articulate speech
To tell Your
simplest want, and known,
Wailing upon a
woman’s knee,
All of that worst
ignominy
Of flesh and
bone;
And when through
all the town there ran
The servants of
your enemy,
A woman and a
man,
Unless the Holy
Writings lie,
Hurried through
the smooth and rough
And through the
fertile and waste,
Protecting, till
the danger past
With human love.”
(Yeats, 2010, ‘A prayer for my Son, p.290).
“Endure what life
God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember
the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
Delight becomes
death-longing if all longing else be vain” (Yeats, 2010, ‘From Oedipus at
Colonus’, p.308).
“For meditations
upon unknown thought
Make human
intercourse grow less and less.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘All Soul’s night’, p.311).
“The innocent and
the beautiful
Have no enemy but
time:
Arise and bid me
strike a match
And strike
another till time catch;
Should the
conflagration climb” (Yeats, 2010, ‘In memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con
Markiewicz’, p.315).
“Nor dread nor
hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his
end
Dreading and
hoping all;” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Death’, p.316).
“Blessed be this
place,
More blessed
still this tower;
A bloody,
arrogant power
Rose out of the
race
Uttering,
mastering it,
Rose like these
walls from these
Storm-beaten
cottages –
In mockery I have
set
A powerful emblem
up,
And sing it rhyme
upon rhyme
In mockery of a
time
Half dead at the
top.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Blood and the Moon’, p.320).
“The Seventh: They
walked the roads
Mimicking what
they heard, as children mimic;
They understood
that wisdom comes of beggary.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The seven sages’, p.326).
“Under my window
ledge the waters race,
Otters below and
moorhens on the top,
Run for a mile
undimming in Heaven’s face
Then darkening
through ‘dark’ Raftery’s ‘cellar’ drop,
Run underground
rise in a rocky place
In Coole demesne
and there to finish up
Spread to a lake
and drop into a hole.
What’s water but
the generated soul?” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Coole and Ballylee, p.329).
“Another emblem
there! That stormy white
But seems a
concentration of the sky;
And, like the
soul, it sails into the sight
And in the
morning’s gone, no man knows why;
And is so lovely
that it sets to right
What knowledge or
its lack had set awry,
So arrogantly
pure, a child might think
It can be
murdered with a spot of ink” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Coole and Ballylee’, p.329).
“Between extremities
Man runs his
course;
A brand, or
flaming breath,
Comes to destroy
All those
antinomies
Of day and night;
The body calls it
death,
The heart
remorse.
But if these be
right
What is joy?”
(Yeats, 2010, ‘Vacillation’, p.337).
“No man has ever
lived that had enough
Of children’s
gratitude or woman’s love.
No longer in
Lethean foliage caught
Begin the preparation
for your death
And from the
fortieth winter by that thought
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.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Vacillation’, p.337).
“Things said or
done long years ago
Or things I did
not do or say
But thought that
I might say or do,
Weigh me down,
and not a day
But something is
recalled,
My conscience or
my vanity appalled.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Vacillation’, p.338).
“The soul. Seek
out reality, leave things that seem.
The heart. What,
be a singer born and lack a theme?
The soul.
Isaiah’s coal, what more can man desire?
The heart. Struck
dumb in the simplicity of fire!
The soul. Look on
that fire, salvation walks within.
The heart. What
theme had Homer but original sin.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Vacillation’, p.339).
“What they
undertook to do
They brought to
pass;
All things hang
like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of
grass.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Gratitude to the unknown Instructors’, p.343).
“I broke my heart
in two
So hard I struck.
What matter? For
I know
That out of rock,
Out of a desolate
source,
Love leaps upon
its course.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘His confidence, p.352).
“I’m looking for
the face I had
Before the world
was made.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘A woman young and old’, p.361).
“Why should I seek for love or study it?
It is of God and
passes human wit.
I study hatred
with great diligence,
For that’s a
passion in my own control,
A sort of besom
that can clear the soul
Of everything
that is not mind or sense.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Ribh considers Christian love
insufficient’, p.382).
“’I am I, am I,
The greater grows
my light
The further that
I fly.’” (Yeats, 2010, ‘He and She’, p.383).
“An Acre of Grass
Picture and book
remain,
An acre of green
grass
For air and exercise,
Now strength and
body goes;
Midnight, an old
house
Where nothing but
a mouse stirs.
My temptation is
quiet.
Here at life’s
end” ” (Yeats, 2010, ‘An acre of Grass’, p.399).
“Parnell came down the road, he said to a
cheering man:
‘Ireland shall
get her freedom and you still break stone.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Parnell’, p.413).
“Grandfather sang
it under the gallows:
‘Hear, gentleman,
ladies and all mankind:
Money is good and
a girl might be better,
But good strong
blows are delights to the mind.’
There, standing
on the cart,
He sang it from
his hear.
Robbers had taken his old tambourine,
But he took down the moon
And rattled out a tune;
Robbers had taken his old tambourine.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Three marching songs’,
p.435).
“I sought a theme
and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily
for six week or so.
Maybe at last,
being but a broken man,
I must be
satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer
till old age began
My circus animals
were all on show
Those stilted
boys that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman
and the Lord knows what.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’, p.449).
“Man: In a cleft
that’s christened Alt
Under broken
stone I halt
At the bottom of
a pit
That broad noon
has never lit,
And shout a
secret to the stone.
All that I have
said and done,
Now that I am old
and ill,
Turns into a
question till,
I lie awake night
after night
And never get the
answer right.
Did that play of
mine send out
Certain men the
English shot?
Did words of mine
put too great strain
On that woman’s
reeling brain?
Could my spoken
words have checked
That whereby a
house lay wrecked?
And all seems
evil until I
Sleepless would
lie down and die.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘The Man and the Echo’, p.452).
“Many times man
lives and dies
Between his two
eternities,
That of race and
that of soul,
And ancient
Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die
in his bed
Or the rifle
knocks him dead,
A brief parting
from those dear
Is the worst man
has to fear.
Though grave
diggers’ toil is long,
Sharp their
spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust
their buried men
Back in the human
mind again.” (Yeats, 2010, ‘Under Ben Bulben’, p.457).
