William Butler Yeats – A Dialogue of Self and Soul

I My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;    Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,    Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,    Upon the breathless starlit air,    Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;    Fix...

William Butler Yeats – A Prayer for My Daughter

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid    Under this cradle-hood and coverlid    My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle    But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill    Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind,    Bred...

William Butler Yeats – The Wild Old Wicked Man

'Because I am mad about women I am mad about the hills,' Said that wild old wicked man Who travels where God wills. 'Not to die on the straw at home, Those hands to close the eyes, That is all I ask, my dear, From the old man in the skies.        ...

William Butler Yeats – When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or...

William Butler Yeats – The Cold Heaven

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice, And thereupon imagination and heart were driven So wild that every casual thought of that and this Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season With...

William Butler Yeats – Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening...

William Butler Yeats – The Sad Shepherd

There was a man whom Sorrow named his friend, And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming, Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming And humming sands, where windy surges wend: And he called loudly to the stars to bend From their pale thrones and comfort him, but...

William Butler Yeats – The Everlasting Voices

O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more; Have you not heard that our hearts are old, That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, In shaken boughs, in...

William Butler Yeats – Never give all the Heart

Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For...

William Butler Yeats – Reconciliation

Some may have blamed you that you took away The verses that could move them on the day When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind With lightning, you went from me, and I could find Nothing to make a song about but kings, Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten...

William Butler Yeats – An Irish Airman foresees his Death

I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor...

William Butler Yeats – Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes, The poets labouring all their days To build a perfect beauty in rhyme Are overthrown by a woman’s gaze And by the unlabouring brood of the skies: And therefore my heart will bow, when dew Is dropping sleep, until God burn time, Before...

William Butler Yeats – The Player Queen

(Song from an Unfinished Play) My mother dandled me and sang,    'How young it is, how young!'    And made a golden cradle    That on a willow swung.        'He went away,' my mother sang, 'When I was brought to bed,' ...

William Butler Yeats – The Sorrow of Love

The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,  The full round moon and the star-laden sky,  And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,  Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.     And then you came with those red mournful lips,  And...