W.B. Yeats: Quotes about heart

“The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart.”

W.B. Yeats

In The Seven Woods http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1518/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Context: I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away
The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile
Tara uprooted, and new commonness
Upon the throne and crying about the streets
And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,
Because it is alone of all things happy.
I am contented, for I know that Quiet
Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart
Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,
Who but awaits His house to shoot, still hands
A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-lee.

Heart

“Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain”

W.B. Yeats

Never Give All The Heart http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1545/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Context: Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
but a brief, dreamy, kind of delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

Love , Women , Thinking , Passion

“The fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart.”

W.B. Yeats

The Fascination Of What's Difficult http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1619/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
Context: The fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day's war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

Nature , Heart , Joy

“O heart, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause”

W.B. Yeats

Against Unworthy Praise http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1433/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
Context: p>O heart, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause
Being for a woman's sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.What, still you would have their praise!
But here's a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.</p

Peace , Heart

“And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.”

W.B. Yeats

Never Give All The Heart http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1545/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Context: Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
but a brief, dreamy, kind of delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

Love , Heart

“I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.”

W.B. Yeats

The Lake Isle of Innisfree, st. 3
The Rose (1893)

Heart

“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.

Love , Heart

“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

Fear , Heart

“Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.”

W.B. Yeats

Heart

“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”

W.B. Yeats

St. 5
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Context: 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 that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

Beauty , Learning , Heart

“Hearts are not to be had as a gift, hearts are to be earned.”

W.B. Yeats

Heartbreaking , Heart , Sad

“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.”

W.B. Yeats

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Heart

“Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.”

W.B. Yeats

Heart

“Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”

W.B. Yeats

The Circus Animals' Desertion, III
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Lie , Heart

“Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
Oh, when may it suffice?”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 4
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
Variant: Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
Source: Easter 1916 and Other Poems

Heart

“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.”

W.B. Yeats

Letter to the Editor, Dublin Daily Express (27 February 1895)

Mood , Passion , Heart

“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
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 3
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/

Beauty , Nature , Heart

“Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

St. 3
The Tower (1928), Sailing to Byzantium http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1575/