William Butler Yeats: Poems

William Butler Yeats

Poems

A Bronze Head [Here at right of the entrance this bronze head]
A Coat [I made my song a coat]
A Cradle Song [The angels are stooping]
A Crazed Girl [That crazed girl improvising her music]
A Deep-Sworn Vow [Others because you did not keep]
A Dialogue Of Self And Soul [I summon to the winding ancient stair]
A Dream Of Death [I dreamed that one had died in a strange place]
A Drinking Song [Wine comes in at the mouth]
A Drunken Man's Praise Of Sobriety [Come swish around, my pretty punk]
A Faery Song [We who are old, old and gay]
A Friend's Illness [Sickness brought me this]
A Man Young And Old [Though nurtured like a sailing moon]
A Meditation In Time Of War [For one throb of the artery]
A Memory Of Youth [The moments passed as at a play]
A Model For The Laureate [On thrones from China to Peru]
A Nativity [What woman hugs her infant there?]
A Poet To His Beloved [I bring you with reverent hands]
A Prayer For My Daughter [Once more the storm is howling, and half hid]
A Prayer For My Son [Bid a strong ghost stand at the head]
A Prayer For Old Age [God guard me from those thoughts men think]
A Prayer On Going Into My House [God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage]
A Song [I thought no more was needed]
A Song From "The Player Queen" [My mother dandled me and sang]
A Stick Of Incense [Whence did all that fury come?]
A Thought From Propertius [She might, so noble from head]
A Woman Homer Sung [If any man drew near]
A Woman Young And Old [She hears me strike the board and say]
Adam's Curse [We sat together at one summer's end]
Aedh Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven [Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths]
After Long Silence [Speech after long silence; it is right]
Against Unworthy Praise [O heart, be at peace, because]
All Souls' Night [Midnight has come, and the great Christ Church Bell]
All Things Can Tempt Me [All things can tempt me from this craft of verse]
Alternative Song For The Severd Head in "The King Of The Great Clock Tower" [Saddle and ride, I heard a man say]
Among School Children [I walk through the long schoolroom questioning]
An Acre Of Grass [Picture and book remain]
An Appointment [Being of of heart with government]
An Image From A Past Life [Never until this night have I been stirred]
An Irish Airman Forsees His Death [I know that I shall meet my fate]
Anashuya And Vijaya [O, may tranquility walk by his elbow]
Another Song Of A Fool [This great purple butterfly]
Are You Content? [I call on those that call me son]
At Aleciras -- A Meditation Upon Death [The heron-billed pale cattle-birds]
At Galway Races [There where the course is]
At The Abbey Theatre [Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case]
Baile And Aillinn [I hardly hear the curlew cry]
Beautiful Lofty Things [Beautiful lofty things: O'Leary's noble head]
Before The World Was Made [If I make the lashes dark]
Beggar To Beggar Cried [Time to put off the world and go somewhere]
Blood And The Moon [Blessed be this place]
Broken Dreams [There is grey in your hair]
Brown Penny [I whispered, "I am too young,"]
Byzantium [The unpurged images of day recede]
Chosen [The lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much]
Church And State [Here is fresh matter, poet]
Colonel Martin [The Colonel went out sailing]
Colonus' Praise [Come praise Colonus' horses, and come praise]
Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites [Come gather round me, Parnellites]
Consolation [O but there is wisdom]
Coole Park And Ballylee, 1931 [I meditate upon a swallow's flight]
Coole Park, 1929 [I meditate upon a swallow's flight]
Crazy Jane And Jack The Journeyman [I know, altough when looks meet]
Crazy Jane And The Bishop [Bring me to the blasted oak]
Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks At The Dancers [I found that ivory image there]
Crazy Jane On God [That lover of a night]
Crazy Jane On The Day Of Judgment [Love is all]
Crazy Jane On The Mountain [I am tired of cursing the Bishop]
Crazy Jane Reproved [I care not what the sailors say]
Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop [I met the Bishop on the road]
Cuchulain Comforted [A man that had six mortal wounds, a man]
Cuchulain's Fight With The Sea [A man came slowly from the setting sun]
Death [Nor dread nor hope attend]
Demon And Beast [For certain minutes at the least]
Down By The Salley Gardens [Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet]
Easter, 1916 [I have met them at close of day]
Ego Dominus Tuus [On the grey sand beside the shallow stream]
Ephemera [Your eyes that once were never weary of mine]
Fallen Majesty [Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face]
Father And Child [She hears me strike the board and say]
Fergus And The Druid [This whole day have I followed in the rocks]
For Anne Gregory [Never shall a young man]
From The Green Helmet And Other Poems [I swayed upon the gaudy stem]
Fragments [Locke sank into a swoon]
Friends [Now must I these three praise]
From A Full Moon In March [Under the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd]
From The "Antigone" [Overcome -- O bitter sweetness]
Girl's Song [I went out alone]
Gratitude To The Unknown Instructors [What they undertook to do]
He Bids His Beloved Be At Peace [I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake]
He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes [Fasten your hair with a golden pin]
He Hears The Cry Of The Sedge [I wander by the edge]
He Mourns For The Change That Has Come Upon Him And His Beloved, And Longs For The End Of The World [Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns?]
He Remembers Forgotten Beauty [When my arms wrap you round I press]
He Reproves The Curlew [O curlew, cry no more in the air]
He Tells Of A Valley Full Of Lovers [I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs]
He Tells Of The Perfect Beauty [O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes]
He Thinks Of His Past Greatness When A Part Of The Constellation Of Heaven [I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young]
He Thinks Of Those Who Have Spoken Evil Of His Beloved [Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair]
He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven [Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths]
He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead [Were you but lying cold and dead]
Her Praise [She is the foremost of those that I would hear praised]
High Talk [Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that]
His Phoenix [There is a queen in China, or maybe it's in Spain]
Hound Voice [Because we love bare hills and stunted trees]
Imitated From The Japanese [A most astonishing thing]
In Memory Of Alfred Pollexfen [Five-and-twenty years have gone]
In Memory Of Major Rodert Gregory [Now that we're almost settled in our house]
In Tara's Halls [A man I praise that once in Tara's Halls]
In The Seven Woods [I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods]
Into The Twilight [Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn]
John Kinsella's Lament For Mr. Mary Moore [A bloody and sudden end]
King And No King [Would it were anything but merely voice!]
Lapis Lazuli [I have heard that hysterical women say]
Leda And The Swan [A sudden blow: the great wings beating still]
Lines Written In Dejection [When have I last looked on]
Long-Legged Fly [That civilisation may not sink]
Maid Quiet [Where has Maid Quiet gone to]
Me Peacock [What's riches to him]
Meditations In Time Of Civil War [Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns]
Memory [One had a lovely face]
Men Improve With The Years [I am worn out with dreams]
Mohini Chatterjee [I asked if I should pray]
Narrative And Dramatic The Wanderings Of Oisin [S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind]
Never Give All The Heart [Never give all the heart, for love]
News For The Delphic Oracle [There all the golden codgers lay]
Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen [Many ingenious lovely things are gone]
No Second Troy [Why should I blame her that she filled my days]
O Do Not Love Too Long [Sweetheart, do not love too long]
Oil And Blood [In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli]
Old Memory [O thought, fly to her when then end of day]
On A Picture Of A Black Centaur By Edmund Dulac [Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood]
On A Political Prisoner [She that but little patience knew]
On Being Asked For A War Poem [I think it better that in times like these]
On Hearing That The Students Of Our New University Have Joined The Agitation Against Immoral Literature [Where, where but here have pride and Truth]
On Those That Hated "The Playboy Of The Western World" [Once, when midnight smote the air]
On Woman [May God be praised for woman]
Owen Aherne And His Dancers [A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought]
Parnell [Parnell came down the road, he said to a cheering man]
Paudeen [Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite]
Peace [Ah, that Time could touch a form]
Politics [How can I, that girl standing there]
Presences [This night has been so strange that it seemed]
Quarrel In Old Age [Where had her sweetness gone]
Reconciliation [Some may have blamed you that you took away]
Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland [The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand]
Remorse For Intemperate Speech [I ranted to the knave and fool]
Responsibilities [Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain]
Roger Casement [I say that Roger Casement]
Running To Paradise [As I came over Windy Gap]
Sailing To Byzantium [That is no country for old men. The young]
September [What need you, being come to sense]
Shepherd And Goatheard [Shepherd, that cry's from the first cuckoo of the year]
Sixteen Dead Men [O but we talked at large before]
Slim Adolescence That A Nymph Has Stripped [Slim adolescence that a nymph has stripped]
Solomon And The Witch [And thus declared that Arab lady]
Solomon To Sheba [Sang Solomon to Sheba]
Spilt Milk [We that have done and thought]
Statistics [Those Platonists are a curse, he said]
Stream And Sun At Glendalough [Through intricate motions ran]
Supernatural Songs [Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night]
Sweet Dancer [The girl goes dancing there]
Swift's Epitaph [Swift has sailed into his rest]
Symbols [A storm beaten old watch-tower]
That The Night Come [She lived in storm and strife]
The Apparitions [Because there is safety in derision]
The Arrow [I thought of your beauty, and this arrow]
The Ballad Of Father Gilligan [The old priest Peter Gilligan]
The Ballad Of Father O'Hart [Good Father John O'Hart]
The Ballad Of Moll Magee [Come round me, little childer]
The Ballad Of The Foxhunter [Lay me in a cushioned chair]
The Balloon Of The Mind [Hands, do what you're bid]
The Black Tower [Say that the men of the old black tower]
The Blessed [Cumhal called out, bending his head]
The Cap And Bells [The jester walked in the garden]
The Cat And The Moon [The cat went here and there]
The Chambermaid's First Song [How came this ranger]
The Chambermaid's Second Song [From pleasure of the bed]
The Choice [The intellect of man is forced to choose]
The Circus Animal Desertion [I sought a theme and sought for it in vain]
The Cloak, The Boat, And The Shoes [What do you make so fair and bright?]
The Cold Heaven [Suddenly I saw the cold and rock-delighting heaven]
The Collar-Bone Of A Hare [Would I could cast a sad on the water]
The Coming Of Wisdom With Time [Though leaves are many, the root is one]
The Countess Cathleen In Paradise [All the heavy days are over]
The Crazed Moon [Crazed through much child-bearing]
The Curse Of Cromwell [You ask what -- I have found, and far and wide I go]
The Dancer At Cruachan And Cro-Patrick [I, proclaiming that there is]
The Dawn [I would be ignorant as the dawn]
The Dedication To A Book Of Stories [There was a green branch hung with many a bell]
The Delphic Oracle Upon Plotinus [Behld that great Plotinus swim]
The Dolls [A doll in the doll-maker's house]
The Double Vision Of Michael Robartes [On the grey rock of Cashel the mind's eye]
The Everlasting Voices [O sweet everlasting Voices, be still]
The Falling Of The Leaves [Autumn is over the long leaves that love us]
The Fascination Of What's Difficult [The fascination of what's difficult]
The Fiddler Of Dooney [When I play on my fiddle in Dooney]
The Fish [Although you hide in the ebb and flow]
The Fisherman [Although I can see him still]
The Folly Of Being Comforted [One that is ever kind said yesterday]
The Fool By The Roadside [When all works that have]
The Ghost Of Roger Casement [O what has made that sudden noise?]
The Gift Of Harun Al-Rashid [Kusta Ben Luka is my name, I write]
The Great Day [Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!]
The Grey Rocks [Poets with whom I learned my trade]
The Gyres [The Gyres! the gyres! Old Rocky Face, look forth]
The Happy Townland [There's many a strong farmer]
The Harp Of Aengus [Edain came out of Midhir's hill, and lay]
The Hawk [Call down the hawk from the air]
The Heart Of The Woman [O what to me the little room]
The Host Of The Air [O'Driscoll drove with a song]
The Hosting Of The Sidhe [The host is riding form Knocknarea]
The Hour Before Dawn [A cursing rogue with a merry face]
The Indian To His Love [The island dreams under the dawn]
The Indian Upon God [I passed along the water's edge below the humid trees]
The Lady's First Song [I turn around]
The Lady's Second Song [What sort of man is coming]
The Lady's Third Song [When you and my true lover meet]
The Lake Isle Of Innisfree [I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree]
The Lamentation Of The Old Pensioner [Although I shelter from the rain]
The Leaders Of The Crowd [They must to keep their certainty accuse]
The Living Beauty [I bade, because the wick and oil are spent]
The Lover Asks Forgiveness Because Of His Many Moods [If this importunate heart trouble your peace]
The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love [Pale brows, still hands and dim hair]
The Lover Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends [Though you are in your shining days]
The Lover Speaks To The Hearers Of His Songs In Coming Days [O women, kneeling by your altar-rails long hence]
The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His Heart [All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out]
The Lover's Song [Bird sighs for the air]
The Madness Of King Goll [I sat on cushioned otter-skin]
The Magi [Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye]
The Man And The Echo [In a cleft that's christened Alt]
The Man Who Dreamed Of Faeryland [He stood among a crowd at Dromahair]
The Mask [Put off that mask of burning gold]
The Meditation Of The Old Fisherman [You waves, though you dance by my feed like children]
The Moods [Time drops in decay]
The Mother Of God [The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare]
The Mountain Tomb [Pour wine and dance if manhood still have pride]
The Municipal Gallery Revisited [Around me the images of thirty years]
The New Faces [If you, that have grown old, were the first dead]
The Nineteenth Century And After [Though the great song return no more]
The O'Rahilly [Sing of the O'Rahilly]
The Old Age Of Queen Maeve [A certain poet in outlandish clothes]
The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water [I heard the old, old men say]
The Old Stone Cross [A statesman is an easy man]
The People [What have I earned for all that work, I said]
The Phases Of The Moon [An old man cocked his car upon a bridge]
The Pilgrim [I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk]
The Pity Of Love [A pity beyond all telling]
The Players Ask For A Blessing On The Psalteries And On Themselves [Three Voices together. Hurry to bless the hands that play]
The Poet Pleads With The Elemental Powers [The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows]
The Ragged Wood [O Hurry where by water among the trees]
The Realists [Hope that you may understand!]
The Results Of Thought [Acquaintance; companion;]
The Rose Of Battle [Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!]
The Rose Of Peace [If Michael, leader of God's host]
The Rose Of The World [Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?]
The Rose Tree [O words are lightly spoken]
The Sad Shepherd [There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend]
The Saint And The Hunchback [Hunchback. Stand up and lift your hand and bless]
The Scholars [Bald heads forgetful of their sins]
The Second Coming [Turning and turning in the widening gyre]
The Secret Rose [Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose]
The Seven Sages [The First. My great-grandfather spoke to Edmund Burke]
The Shadowy Waters [The deck of an ancient ship...]
The Shadowy Waters [I walked among the seven woods of Coole]
The Song Of The Happy Shepherd [The woods or Arcady are dead]
The Song Of The Old Mother [I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow]
The Song Of Wandering Aengus [I went out to the hazel wood]
The Sorrow Of Love [The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves]
The Spirit Medium [Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet]
The Spur [You think it horrible that lust and rage]
The Stateman's Holiday [I lived among great houses]
The Statues [Pythagoras planned it. Why did the people stare?]
The Stolen Child [Where dips the rocky highland]
The Three Beggars [Though to my feathres in the wet]
The Three Bushes [Said lady once to lover]
The Three Hermits [Three old hermits took the air]
The Three Monuments [They hold their public meetings where]
The Travail Of Passion [When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide]
The Two Kings [King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood]
The Two Trees [Beloved, gaze in thine own heart]
The Unappeasable Host [The Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold]
The Valleys Of The Black Pig [The dews drop slowly and dreams gather...]
The Wheel [Through winter-time we call on spring]
The White Birds [I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea]
The Wild Old Wicked Man [Because I am mad about women]
The Wild Swans At Coole [The trees are in their autumn beauty]
The Winding Stair And Other Poems [The light of evening, Lissadell]
The Witch [Toil and grow rich]
The Withering Of The Boughs [I cried when the moon was mutmuring to the birds]
These Are The Clouds [These are the clouds about the fallen sun]
Those Images [What if I bade you leave]
Three Marching Songs [Remember all those renowned generations]
Three Movements [Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land]
Three Songs To The One Burden [The Roaring Tinker if you like]
Three Songs To The Same Tune [Grandfather sang it under the gallows]
To A Child Dancing In The Wind [Dance there upon the shore]
To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing [Now all the truth is out]
To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators Of His And Mine [You say, as I have often given tongue]
To A Shade [If you have revisited the town, thin Shade]
To A Squirrel At Kyle-Na No [Come play with me]
To A Wealthy Man Who Promised A Second Subscription To The Dublin Municipal Gallery If It Were Proved The People Wanted Pictures [You gave, but will not give again]
To A Young Beauty [Dear fellow-artist, why so free]
To A Young Girl [My dear, my dear, I know]
To An Isle In The Water [Shy one, Shy one]
To Be Carved On A Stone At Thoor Ballylee [I, the poet William Yeats]
To Dorothy Wellesley [Stretch towards the moonless midnight of the trees]
To His Heart, Bidding It Have No Fear [Be you still, be you still, trembling heart]
To Ireland In The Coming Times [Know, that I would accounted be]
To Some I Have Talked With By The Fire [While I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes]
To Songs Of A Fool [A speckled cat and a tame hare]
To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time [Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days]
Tom O'Roughley [Though logic-choppers rule the town]
Towards Break Of Day [Was it the double of my dream]
Two Song From A Play [I saw a staring virgin stand]
Two Songs Rewritten For The Tune's Sake [My Paistin Finn is my sole desire]
Two Years Later [Has no one said those daring]
Under Ben Bulben [Swear by what the sages spoke]
Under Saturn [Do not because this day I have grown saturine]
Under The Moon [I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde]
Under The Round Tower [Although I'd lie lapped up in linen]
Upon A Dying Lady [With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace]
Upon A House Shaken By The Land Agitation [How should the world be luckier if this house]
Vacilliation [Between extremities]
Veronica's Napkin [The Heavenly Circuit; Berenice's Hair]
What Then? [His chosen comrades thought at school]
What Was Lost [I sing what was lost and dread what was won]
When Helen Lived [We have cried in our despair]
When You Are Old [When you are old and grey and full of sleep]
Who Goes With Fergus? [Who will go drive with Fergus now]
Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad? [Why should not old men be mad?]
Wisdom [The true faith discovered was]
Words [I had this thought a while ago]
Youth And Age [Much did I rage when young]

William Butler Yeats

Poems

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