WB Yeats quotes

First line of ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’

I will arise and go now to go to Innisfree

And live alone…

in the bee-loud glade

And I shall have some…

peace there…dropping from the veils of the mornings to where the crickets sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow and evening full of the linnet’s wing

Repetition of the first line of ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore

While I stand on the …

roadway, or on the pavement grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core

But fumble in a (September 1913)…

greasy till and add the halfpence to the pence and prayer to shivering prayer, until you have dried the marrow from the bone?

Repeating refrain in ‘September 1913’

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave

Yet they were of a … (Sept 1913)

different kind, the names that stilled your childish play…But little time had they to pray

Was is for this the wild…

geese spread…For this that all that blood was shed, for this…all that delirium of the brave?

Some woman’s yellow hair… (allusion to ?)

has maddened every mother’s son ; allusion to Kathleen Ni Hoolihan

first line of ‘The Wild Swans of Coole’

The trees are in their autumn beauty…upon the brimming water among the stones are nine-and-fifty swans

All suddenly mount and…

scatter wheeling in great broken rings upon their clamorous wings

I have looked upon those…

brilliant creatures, and now my heart is sore. All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight, the first time on this shore, the bell-beat of their wings above my head, trod with a lighter tread

Unwearied still, ….

lover by lover, they paddle in the cold…passion or conquest, wander where they will, attend upon them still

By what lake’s edge or…

pool delight men’s eyes when I awake some day to find they have flown away?

Being certain that they and … (Easter 1916) (mocking them)

I but lived where motley is worn (mocking tale or a gibe to please a companion)

repeating refrain in ‘Easter 1916’

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born

That woman’s day were spent…

in ignorant good-will…until her voice grew shrill (markievicz)

Maud Gonne’s husband commentry:

A drunken, vainglorious lout. He had done most bitter wrong to some who are near my heart, yet I number him in the song…He, too has been changed in his turn, transformed utterly

Hearts with one purpose..

alone through summer and winter seem enchanted to a stone to trouble the living stream…the stone’s in the midst of it all

Too long a sacrifice…

can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?

I write it in a …

verse - (MacDonagh and MacBribe and Connolly and Pearse) now and in time to be, wherever green is worn, are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born

I know that I shall … (‘An Irishman Forsees His Death’)

meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above

Those that I fight..

I do not hate, those that I gaurd I do not love; my country is Kiltartan Cross, my countrymen Kiltartan’s poor

No law, nor duty bade…

me fight…a lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the clouds

Last line of ‘An Irishman Forsees His Death’

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death

That is no … (Sailing to Byzantium)

country for old men. The young in one another’s arms, birds in the trees - those dying generations

What is begotten…

born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect monuments of unageing intellect

An aged man is but…

a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing

Come from the holy fire, perne…

in a gyre, and be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume by heart away…

sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what it is'; and gather me into the artifice of eternity

Once out of nature I shall never.. (last stanza)

take my bodily form from any natural thing, but such a form…of hammered gold and gold enamelling to keep a drowsy Emperor awake…of what is past, or passing, or to come