A list of the greatest Irish poets and litterateurs of all time cannot go without the mention of William Butler Yeats. A Nobel laureate, Yeats was an indomitable literary figure of the 20th century who eventually became a pillar of British and Irish literary establishments. He served as one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre and was a chief playwright until John Synge. Interestingly, though Yeats received Nobel Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today however rests on his lyric achievement. He is one of the few writers whose most prolific works came in after the coveted Nobel Prize. Yeats later works comprising of ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, ‘Michael Robartes and the Dancer’, ‘The Tower’, ‘The Winding Stair and Other Poems’ and ‘Last Poems and Plays’ made him one of the most outstanding and influential twentieth-century poets. Unlike other modernists of his era, Yeats was a master of traditional style. He used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his life. His works are based on recurrent themes that are the contrast of art and life, physical and spiritual masks, cyclical theories of life and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life. Even today, his poetry remains highly popular and has been repeatedly adapted and rediscovered by new literary and performance movements. However, the rich legacy of poetry is not the only thing that Yeats left behind after him. He also gave the world some of the most meaningful collection of quotes that have given readers a new perspective and a new vision to life and values. Explore this section and brief yourself.
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
W B Yeats
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.
A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him up for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.
W B Yeats
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
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)
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
W B Yeats
WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and sigh.
Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.
W B Yeats
In dreams begin responsibilities.
W B Yeats
Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
W B Yeats
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those who are not entirely beautiful.
W B Yeats
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 shadows deep
Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
W B Yeats
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.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
W B Yeats
An intellectual hatred is the worst.
W B Yeats
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 no great loss perhaps.
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
W B Yeats
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;...
Time drops in decay
Like a candle burnt out.
And the mountains and woods
Have their day, have their day;
But, kindly old rout
Of the fire-born moods,
You pass not away.
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness.
They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all.
W B Yeats
The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.
W B Yeats
Cuchulain stirred,
Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard
The cars of battle and his own name cried;
And fought with the invulnerable tide.
W B Yeats
How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?
W B Yeats
All the wild-witches, those most notable ladies
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.
W B Yeats
I wish for you constantly for I want to talk about everybody and everything. I can't go up to a stranger & say 'your manners &looks have stirred me to this profound meditation'-
Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell?
-Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil
W B Yeats
BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
