The Oxford dictionary of modern quotations (94 page)

The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) "The Fascination of What's

Difficult"

But where's the wild dog that has praised his fleas?

The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) "To a Poet, Who would have Me

Praise certain bad Poets, Imitators of His and of Mine"

When I was young,

I had not given a penny for a song

Did not the poet sing it with such airs,

That one believed he had a sword upstairs.

The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) "All Things can Tempt Me"

Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,

That long to give themselves for wage,

To shake their wicked sides at youth

Restraining reckless middle age?

The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1912) "On hearing that the Students of

our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature"

I said "a line will take us hours maybe,

Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."

In the Seven Woods (1903) "Adam's Curse"

The land of faery,

Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,

Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,

Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

The Land of Heart's Desire (1894) p. 12

Land of Heart's Desire,

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,

But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song.

The Land of Heart's Desire (1894) p. 36

Measurement began our might:

Forms a stark Egyptian thought,

Forms that gentler Phidias wrought.

Michaelangelo left a proof

On the Sistine Chapel roof,

Where but half-awakened Adam

Can disturb globe-trotting Madam

Till her bowels are in heat,

Proof that there's a purpose set

Before the secret working mind:

Profane perfection of mankind.

Last Poems (1939) "Under Ben Bulben" pt. 4

Irish poets, learn your trade,

Sing whatever is well made,

Scorn the sort now growing up

All out of shape from toe to top,

Their unremembering hearts and heads

Base-born products of base beds.

Sing the peasantry, and then

Hard-riding country gentlemen,

The holiness of monks, and after

Porter-drinkers' randy laughter.

Last Poems (1939) "Under Ben Bulben" pt. 5

Cast your mind on other days

That we in coming days may be

Still the indomitable Irishry.

Last Poems (1939) "Under Ben Bulben" pt. 5

Under bare Ben Bulben's head

In Drumcliffe churchyard Yeats is laid.

An ancestor was rector there

Long years ago, a church stands near,

By the road an ancient cross.

No marble, no conventional phrase;

On limestone quarried near the spot

By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye

On life, on death.

Horseman pass by!

Last Poems (1939) "Under Ben Bulben" pt. 6

Pythagoras planned it. Why did the people stare?

His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move

In marble or in bronze, lacked character.

But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love

Of solitary beds, knew what they were,

That passion could bring character enough,

And pressed at midnight in some public place

Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.

No! Greater than Pythagoras, for the men

That with a mallet or a chisel modelled these

Calculations that look but casual flesh, put down

All Asiatic vague immensities,

And not the banks of oars that swam upon

The many-headed foam at Salamis.

Europe put off that foam when Phidias

Gave women dreams and dreams their looking glass.

Last Poems (1939) "The Statues"

When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side

What stalked through the Post Office? What intellect,

What calculation, number, measurement, replied?

We Irish, born into that ancient sect

But thrown upon this filthy modern tide

And by its formless spawning, fury wrecked,

Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace

The lineaments of a plummet-measured face.

Last Poems (1939) "The Statues"

Our master Caesar is in the tent

Where the maps are spread,

His eyes fixed upon nothing,

A hand under his head.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.

Last Poems (1939) "Long-Legged Fly"

Now that my ladder's gone

I must lie down where all ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

Last Poems (1939) "The Circus Animals' Desertion" pt. 3

I have met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

Of a mocking tale or a gibe

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,

Being certain that they and I

But lived where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "Easter, 1916"

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "Easter, 1916"

I write it out in a verse--

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "Easter, 1916"

Turning and turning in 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 all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "The Second Coming"

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "The Second Coming"

An intellectual hatred is the worst,

So let her think opinions are accursed.

Have I not seen the loveliest woman born

Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,

Because of her opinionated mind

Barter that horn and every good

By quiet natures understood

For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "A Prayer for My Daughter"

The ghost of Roger Casement

Is beating on the door.

New Poems (1938) "The Ghost of Roger Casement"

Think where man's glory most begins and ends

And say my glory was I had such friends.

New Poems (1938) "The Municipal Gallery Re-visited"

You think it horrible that lust and rage

Should dance attendance upon my old age;

They were not such a plague when I was young;

What else have I to spur me into song?

New Poems (1938) "The Spur"

I thought no more was needed

Youth to prolong

Than dumb-bell and foil

To keep the body young.

Oh, who could have foretold

That the heart grows old?

Nine Poems (1918) "A Song"

That is no 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

Monuments of unageing intellect.

October Blast (1927) "Sailing to Byzantium"

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress.

October Blast (1927) "Sailing to Byzantium"

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

October Blast (1927) "Sailing to Byzantium"

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

October Blast (1927) "Among School Children"

The Light of Lights

Looks always on the motive, not the deed,

The Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone.

Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 3

The years like great black oxen tread the world,

And God the herdsman goads them on behind,

And I am broken by their passing feet.

Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 4

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!

Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways.

Poems (1895) "To the Rose upon the Rood of Time"

Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!

Poems (1895) "The Rose of Battle"

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;

She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

Poems (1895) "Down by the Salley Gardens"

In dreams begins responsibility.

Responsibilities (1914) epigraph

Was it for this the wild geese spread

The grey wing upon every tide;

For this that all that blood was shed,

For this Edward Fitzgerald died,

And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,

All that delirium of the brave;

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,

It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Responsibilities (1914) "September, 1913"

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 eye

As though they'd wrought it.

Song, let them take it

For there's more enterprise

In walking naked.

Responsibilities (1914) "A Coat"

A woman of so shining loveliness

That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,

A little stolen tress.

The Secret Rose (1897) "To the Secret Rose"

When shall the stars be blown about the sky,

Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

The Secret Rose (1897) "To the Secret Rose"

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,

Old, learned, respectable bald heads

Edit and annotate the lines

That young men, tossing on their beds,

Rhymed out in love's despair

To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;

All wear the carpet with their shoes;

All think what other people think;

All know the man their neighbour knows.

Lord, what would they say

Did their Catullus walk that way?

Selected Poems (1929) "The Scholars"

Does the imagination dwell the most

Upon a woman won or woman lost?

If on the lost, admit you turned aside

From a great labyrinth out of pride.

The Tower (1928) "The Tower" pt. 2

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 thighs?

The Tower (1928) "Leda and the Swan"

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

The Tower (1928) "Leda and the Swan"

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;

Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the

eye of day;

The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

The Tower (1928) "From Oedipus at Colonus"

I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God's will be done,

I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.

The Wild Swans at Coole (1917) "His Phoenix"

I see a schoolboy when I think of him

With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,

For certainly he sank into his grave

His senses and his heart unsatisfied,

And made--being poor, ailing and ignorant,

Shut out from all the luxury of the world,

The ill-bred son of a livery stable-keeper--

Luxuriant song.

The Wild Swans at Coole (1917) "Ego Dominus Tuus" [of Keats]

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public man, nor angry crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.

The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death"

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,