The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and...

I carry the Sun in a Golden Cup, the Moon in a Silver Bag.

O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,How can we know the dancer from the dance?

BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars...

Jonathan Swift made a soul for the gentlemen of this city by hating his neighbor as himself.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”(Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven)

The Cat and the Moon The cat went here and thereAnd the moon spun round like a top,And the nearest kin of the moon,The creeping cat, looked up.Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,For, wander and...

Before me floats an image, man or shade,Shade more than man, more image than a shade;For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-clothMay unwind the winding path;A mouth that has no moisture and no breathBreathless mouths may...

Labour is blossoming or dancing whereThe body is not bruised to pleasure soul.

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the...

I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed,...

An Irish Airman foresees his DeathI 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...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much – indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and...

Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of...

Literature is always personal, always one man’s vision of the world, one man’s experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.

How far away the stars seem, and how farIs our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!

I spit into the face of Time That has transfigured me.

I went out to the hazel woodbecause a fire was in my headcut and peeled a hazel wandand hooked a berry to a threadand when white moths were on the wingand moth-like stars were flickering...

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...

Why should I blame her that she filled my daysWith 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...

The Scholars”Bald heads forgetful of their sins,Old, learned, respectable bald headsEdit and annotate the linesThat young men, tossing on their beds,Rhymed out in love’s despairTo flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.They’ll cough in the ink to the...

I had fallen into a profound dream-like reverie in which I heard him speaking as at a distance. ‘And yet there is no one who communes with only one god,’ he was saying, ‘and the...

Surely some revelation is at hand.

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,...