William Butler Yeats

All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will; She can, though every face should scowl

An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of plenty’s horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good

To be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief. If there’s no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree That all her thoughts may like the linnet be, And have no business but dispensing round Their magnanimities of sound, Nor but in merriment begin a chase, Nor but in merriment a quarrel.

In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned By those that are not entirely beautiful; Yet many, that have played the fool For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise. And many a poor man …

It’s certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone.

May she be granted beauty and yet not Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught, Or hers before a looking-glass, for such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe

Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

I write it out in a verse— MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly:

O when may it suffice? That is heaven's part, our part To murmur name upon name.

Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart.

Minute by minute they live: The stone's in the midst of all.

Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter, seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream.

This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vain-glorious lout. He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart, Yet I number him in the song; He, too, has resigned his part

All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words,

Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.

Could the impossible come to pass She would have time to turn her eyes, Her lover thought, upon the glass And on the instant would grow wise.

Opinion is not worth a rush

The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

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, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is …

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass Alone, important and wise, And lifts to the changing moon His changing eyes.

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create, Timid, entangled, empty and abashed, Lacking the countenance of our …