Category W. B. Yeats

I swayed upon the gaudy stem The butt-end of a steering-oar, And saw wherever I could turn A crowd upon a shore. And though I would have hushed the crowd, There was no mother’s son but said, “What is the…

There’s many a strong farmer Whose heart would break in two, If he could see the townland That we are riding to; Boughs have their fruit and blossom At all times of the year; Rivers are running over With red…

Three Voices [together]. Hurry to bless the hands that play, The mouths that speak, the notes and strings, O masters of the glittering town! O! lay the shrilly trumpet down, Though drunken with the flags that sway Over the ramparts…

Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song. All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other’s, We…

O hurry where by water among the trees The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh, When they have but looked upon their images — Would none had ever loved but you and I! Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed…

I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde, Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle, Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while; Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind; Nor lands…

I heard the old, old men say, ‘Everything alters, And one by one we drop away.’ They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn-trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men say,…

The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand, Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand; Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies, But we have hidden in…

We sat together at one summer’s end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,…

I cried when the moon was mutmuring to the birds: ‘Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will, I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words, For the roads are unending, and there is no place to…