How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
— The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
W. B. Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the leading figures of 20th-century literature. He drove the Irish Literary Revival and, with John Millington Synge and Lady Gregory, founded the Abbey Theatre, which he led in its early years.
As a young poet he was drawn to Irish legend and the occult. From 1900 his poems turned toward the physical world and grew more realistic and political, in books such as The Wild Swans at Coole and The Tower. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 and later served two terms in the Senate of the Irish Free State.
As a young poet he was drawn to Irish legend and the occult. From 1900 his poems turned toward the physical world and grew more realistic and political, in books such as The Wild Swans at Coole and The Tower. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 and later served two terms in the Senate of the Irish Free State.
Most quoted works
- The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats 14
- The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore 3
- The Wind Among the Reeds 3
- Rosa Alchemica 2
- The Wild Swans at Coole 2
Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth / May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath / Breathless mouths may summon;("Byzantium")
— The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild / With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
— The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
I bring you with reverent hands / The books of my numberless dreams.
— The Wind Among the Reeds
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
— The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
I spit into the face of Time That has transfigured me.
— The Rose
How far away the stars seem, and how far / Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!
— The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
All is changed, changed utterlyA terrible beauty is born
— Collected Poems, by W. B. Yeats
One loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.
— The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore
Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame.
— The Land of Heart's Desire