When You Are Old http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1756/, st. 1–3 The Rose (1893) Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Context: p>When you are old and gray 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;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.And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.</p

“… I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made…”

W.B. Yeats

“In dreams begins responsibility.”

W.B. Yeats

Variant: In Dreams begins Responsibility.
Source: Epigraph to the book Responsibilities (1914); this was later adapted as the title of the story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" (1937) by Delmore Schwartz.

“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.”

W.B. Yeats

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

W.B. Yeats

Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918): Anima Hominis, part v

“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 I sigh.”

W.B. Yeats

A Drinking Song http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1399/ The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)

“What can be explained is not poetry.”

W.B. Yeats

“All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.”

W.B. Yeats

Lines Written In Dejection http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1524/, st. 1 The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) Context: When have I last looked on The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies Of the dark leopards of the moon? All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.

“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.”

W.B. Yeats

St. 1
The Rose (1893), The Rose of the World

“A pity beyond all telling
Is hid in the heart of love”

W.B. Yeats

The Pity Of Love http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1670/; in recent years a statement which might have originated as a misquotation of the first lines of this has been attributed to Oscar Wilde: "To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love." — no occurrence prior to 1999 has yet been located. The Rose (1893) Context: A pity beyond all telling Is hid in the heart of love: The folk who are buying and selling, The clouds on their journey above, The cold wet winds ever blowing, And the shadowy hazel grove Where mouse-grey waters are flowing, Threaten the head that I love.

“He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone.”

W.B. Yeats

A Prayer For Old Age http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1423/, st. 1. A Full Moon in March (1935) Context: God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone.

“I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.”

W.B. Yeats

O Do Not Love Too Long http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1549/ In The Seven Woods (1904) Context: 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 were so much at one. But O, in a minute she changed-- O do not love too long, Or you will grow out of fashion Like an old song.

“I am content to live it all again
And yet again,”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

II, st. 3 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/ Context: I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul.