W.B. Yeats
Greatest English-language poet of the 20th century
Most quoted
"Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire?"
— from No Second Troy, 1916
"We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Grattan; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of O'Connell, the people of Charles Stewart Parnell."
— from Speech, 1922
"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."
— from Vacillation, 1933
All quotes by W.B. Yeats (350)
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, / Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
The trees are in their autumn beauty, / The woodland paths are dry,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, / And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars, / Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled / And paced upon the mountains overhead / And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: / One time it was a woman's face, or worse—
I have met them at close of day / Coming with vivid faces / From counter or desk among grey / Eighteenth-century houses.
Hearts with one purpose alone / Through summer and winter seem / Enchanted to a stone / To trouble the living stream.
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. / I learn by going where I have to go.
Contemporaries of W.B. Yeats
Other Literatures born within 50 years of W.B. Yeats (1865–1939).