William Butler Yeats

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.

For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.

Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.

I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away... and the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.

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.

For such, _x000D_ Being made beautiful overmuch, _x000D_ Consider beauty a sufficient end, _x000D_ Lose natural kindness and maybe _x000D_ The heart-revealing intimacy _x000D_ That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.

Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our love

Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.

It seems to me that love, if it is fine, is essentially a discipline.

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.

I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.

Man is in love and loves_x000D_ what vanishes,_x000D_ What more is there to say?

This great purple butterfly,_x000D_ _x000D_ In the prison of my hands,_x000D_ _x000D_ Has a learning in his eye_x000D_ _x000D_ Not a poor fool understands.