Learn: W.B. Yeats quotes nd

This quote from Easter 1916 shows Yeats' skillful use of allusion and symbolism

"This man had kept a school/ And rode our winged horse"

A quote that demonstrates Yeats' ability to create meaning through allusion in An Acre of Grass

"Till I am Timon and Lear/ Or that William Blake"

An "In memory of Eva Gore Booth and Constance Markiewicz" quote that exhibits Yeats' evocative imagery, common motif of his desire to return to the past, and his powerful use of repetition.

"Two girls in silk kimonos, both/ Beautiful, one a gazelle"

This oxymoron is repeated throughout Easter 1916 and demonstrates Yeats' thoughts on a changing Ireland and exhibits the tensions that are seen throughout his poetry.

"A terrible beauty is born"

Yeats uses vivid descriptive imagery to convey the beauty he sees in escaping to live on Inisfree contrasting with the dreary dull life he has in London.

"There midnights all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,/ And evening full of the linnet's wings" & "While standing on the roadway, or on the pavements grey"

This quote from September 1913 highlights Yeats' discontent with the changes that are taking place in Ireland, as he praises the revolutionaries of the past for their attempt at true change.

"Romantic's Ireland's dead and gone,/ It's with O'Leary in the grave"

A quote from September 1913 that features Yeats alluding to Cathleen Ní Houlihaun, a personification of Ireland who is also referenced in Politics, symbolising the passion revolutionaries once had for Ireland.

"Some woman's yellow hair/ Has maddened every mother's son"

A vivid image Yeats illustrates that powerfully shows the importance of these Irish figures of the past in September 1913.

"The names that stilled your childish play"

Rhetorical questions Yeats uses in Easter 1916 that poignantly provoke thought in the reader.

"Was it a needless death after all?" & "O when may it suffice"

A quote from Easter 1916 that highlights the change occurring in Ireland after the death of the freedom fighters he speaks of.

"Wherever green is worn,/ Are changed, changed utterly"

This image Yeats creates in Acre of Grass evocatively portrays the quietness of slipping into old age, the kind of death he doesn't want.

"Midnight, an old house/ Where nothing stirs but a mouse"

Acre of Grass quotes that describe how Yeats wants to spend the latter part of his life, bursting with passion for his art.

"Grant me an old man's frenzy", "inspired by frenzy" & "an old man's eagle mind"

The opening quote of Acre of Grass that simply but powerfully describes the point at which Yeats has reached in life

"Picture and book remain"

In Sailing to Byzantium Yeats conveys his disgust with his aging body with this quote.

"An aged man is but a paltry thing,/ a tattered coat upon a stick"

Yeats creates contrast between his old age and the youth of Ireland in this Sailing to Byzantium quote.

"The young/ In one another's arms, birds in trees"

Yeats encapsulates his passion for art and want to be immortalised in it, as well as his disgust with his failing body in this strikingly picturesque image of the byzantine mosaics.

"O sages standing in god's holy fire/ As in the gold mosaic of the wall...consume my heart away; sick with desire,/ and fastened to a dying animal"

Yeats describes the danger in being too devoted to a cause, refering to the revolutionaries, in Easter 1916.

"Too long a sacrifice/ Can make a stone of the heart."

Yeats to be free of the busling dreary city, longing for escape to Inisfree.

"I shall have some peace there"

Yeats simply but powerfully sums up the motif of age throughout his poetry in this In memory of Eva Gore Booth and Constance Markiewicz quote.

"the innocent and beautiful/ have no enemy but time"

An In memory of Eva Gore Booth and Constance Markiewicz quote that demonstrates nostalgically looking back on his days spent with the two girls, mourning both them and his youth.

"That old Georgian mansion, mix/ Pictures of the mind, recall/ that table and the talk of youth"