#yeats

When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats. ↗

— Howard Nemerov

#butler #eliot #great #i #influence

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost. ↗

— Anne Stevenson

#american #been #blake #books #favorite

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#around #differently #dinner #down #each

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. ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#poetry-quotes #yeats #inspirational

Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O Never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost. ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#heartbreak #in-the-seven-woods #loss #love #never-give-all-the-heart

An Irish Airman foresees his Death I 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 country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death. ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#butler #poem #william #yeats #death

The censorious said she slept in a hammock and understood Yeats's poems, but her family denied both stories. ↗

— Saki

#eccentric #golden-afternoon #humor #saki #twentieth-century

He believes, but he does not believe: the impossibility of believing is the impossibility which he accepts most reluctantly, but still it is there with the other impossibilities of this world which is too full of weeping for a child to understand. ↗

— Edmund Wilson

#yeats #imagination

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears. ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#life

Who Goes With Fergus? Who will go drive with Fergus now, And pierce the deep wood's woven shade, And dance upon the level shore? Young man, lift up your russet brow, And lift your tender eyelids, maid, And brood on hopes and fear no more. And no more turn aside and brood Upon love's bitter mystery; For Fergus rules the brazen cars, And rules the shadows of the wood, And the white breast of the dim sea And all dishevelled wandering stars. ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#william-butler-yeats #love