THOUGH you are in your shining days,Voices among the crowdAnd new friends busy with your praise,Be not unkind or proud,But think about old friends the most:Time’s bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor...

…I was shocked and astonished when a daring little girl — a cousin I think — having waited under a group of trees in the avenue, where she knew [my grandfather] would pass near four...

In dreams be-gin the responsabilities.

O bid me mount and sail up thereAmid the cloudy wrack,For Peg and Meg and Paris’ loveThat had so straight a back,Are gone away, and some that stayHave changed their silk for sack.

(I) only write it now because I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English. (“The Adoration of The...

Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is saidIt was the dream itself enchanted me(“The Circus Animal’s Desertion”)

THE HOST is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare; Caolte tossing his burning hair And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the leaves...

The Song of Wandering AengusI went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white...

Never shall a young man,Thrown into despairBy those great honey-colouredRamparts at your ear,Love you for yourself aloneAnd not your yellow hair.

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...

Ah, faerics, dancing under the moon,A Druid land, a Druid tune!While still I may, I write for youThe love I lived, the dream I knew.

The intellect of man is forced to choosePerfection of the life, or of the workAnd if it take the second must refuseA heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

Come away, O human child!To the waters and the wildWith a faery, hand in hand,For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

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.

Then the woman in the bed sat up and looked about her with wild eyes; and the oldest of the old men said: ‘Lady, we have come to write down the names of the immortals,’...

When you are old and gray 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...

man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in anevil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are thesons of men snared in an evil time,

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being...

What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident? And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this dilapidated...

Wine enters through the mouth,Love, the eyes.I raise the glass to my mouth,I look at you,I sigh.

What can be explained is not poetry.

We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.

And now he is singing a bard’s curse upon you, O brother abbot, and upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather and your grandmother, nd upon all your relations.’Is he cursing in rhyme?’He...

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 tombs of gold and lapis lazuliBodies of holy men and women exudeMiraculous oil, odour of violet.But under heavy loads of trampled clayLie bodies of the vampires full of blood;Their shrouds are bloody and their...

Never give all the heart, for loveWill hardly seem worth thinking ofTo passionate women if it seemCertain, and they never dreamThat it fades out from kiss to kiss;For everything that’s lovely isBut a brief, dreamy,...

As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were...

A lonely impulse of delight

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe 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 everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The...

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

EphemeraYour eyes that once were never weary of mine Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids, Because our love is waning.”And then she: “Although our love is waning, let us stand By the lone border...

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping…I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

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.

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,Her soul in division from itselfClimbing, falling She knew not where,Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declareA beautiful lofty...

ROSE of all Roses, Rose of all the World!The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurledAbove the tide of hours, trouble the air,And God’s bell buoyed to be the water’s care;While hushed from fear, or loud...

I bring you with reverent handsThe books of my numberless dreams.

Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?

When You Are OldWhen 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,...

It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield

To long a sacrifice can make a stone of a heart

The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.

The Mother Of GodThe threefold terror of love; a fallen flareThrough the hollow of an ear;Wings beating about the room;The terror of all terrors that I boreThe Heavens in my womb.Had I not found content...

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

O cowardly amd tyrannous race of monks, persecutors of the bard, and the gleemen, haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O race that melts...

To a Child Dancing in the WindDance there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water’s roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet;Being young you...

An aged man is but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unlessSoul clap its hands and sing, and louder singFor every tatter in its mortal dress

To A Squirrel At Kyle-Na-NoCome play with me;Why should you runThrough the shaking treeAs though I’d a gunTo strike you dead?When all I would doIs to scratch your headAnd let you go.

A couple of hours after Sunset Michael Robartes returned and told me that I would have to learn the steps of an exceedingly antique dance, because before my initiation could be perfected I had to...

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...