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W.B. Yeats citations
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William Butler Yeats , est un poète et dramaturge irlandais, né le 13 juin 1865 à Sandymount et mort le 28 janvier 1939 à Roquebrune Cap Martin,, en France. Fils du peintre John Butler Yeats, il est l'un des instigateurs du renouveau de la littérature irlandaise et cofondateur, avec Lady Gregory, de l'Abbey Theatre. Il a reçu le prix Nobel de littérature en 1923.

Ses premières œuvres aspiraient à une richesse romantique, ce que retrace son recueil publié en 1893 Crépuscule celtique, mais la quarantaine venant, inspiré par sa relation avec les poètes modernistes comme Ezra Pound et en lien avec son implication dans le nationalisme irlandais, il évolua vers un style moderne sans concession. Yeats fut aussi un sénateur de l'État libre d'Irlande pendant deux mandats.

✵ 13. juin 1865 – 28. janvier 1939
W.B. Yeats photo
W.B. Yeats: 256 citations0 J'aime

W.B. Yeats Citations

“Lui qui aurait voulu pouvoir offrir le ciel

Si je pouvais t'offrir le bleu secret du ciel
Brodé de lumière d'or et de reflets d'argents
Le mystérieux secret, le secret éternel
De la nuit et du jour, de la vie et du temps

Avec tout mon amour je le mettrais à tes pieds
Mais tu sais je suis pauvre et je n'ai que mes rêves
Alors c'est de mes rêves qu'il faut te contenter
Marche doucement, car tu marches sur mes rêves”

W.B. Yeats

W.B. Yeats: Citations en anglais

“O but we dreamed to mend
Whatever mischief seemed
To afflict mankind, but now
That winds of winter blow
Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.”

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W.B. Yeats livre The Tower

III, st. 3 <br class="br">The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

“Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.”

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W.B. Yeats

Source: Crossways (1889), The Song Of The Happy Shepherd, l. 57.

“Come near, that no more blinded by man’s fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way.”

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W.B. Yeats

To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time
The Rose (1893)

“O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.”

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W.B. Yeats

Brown Penny http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1454/ <br class="br">The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)

“Some burn damp faggots, others may consume
The entire combustible world in one small room
As though dried straw, and if we turn about
The bare chimney is gone black out
Because the work had finished in that flare.
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
As ’twere all life’s epitome.
What made us dream that he could comb grey hair?”

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W.B. Yeats

In Memory Of Major Robert Gregory http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1516/, st. 11 <br class="br">The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

“Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.”

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W.B. Yeats livre The Tower

V, st. 1 <br class="br">The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

“Somewhere beyond the curtain
Of distorting days
Lives that lonely thing
That shone before these eyes
Targeted, trod like Spring.”

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

Quarrel In Old Age http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1567/, st. 2 <br class="br">The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“The Babylonian starlight brought
A fabulous, formless darkness in;
Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline.”

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W.B. Yeats

Two Songs from a Play, as quoted from The Cycles of History http://www.yeatsvision.com/history.html

“Whatever flames upon the night
Man’s own resinous heart has fed.”

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W.B. Yeats livre The Tower

II, st. 2 <br class="br">The Tower (1928), Two Songs From a Play http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1741/

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

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W.B. Yeats livre Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 4 <br class="br">Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/

“Life moves out of a red flare of dreams
Into a common light of common hours,
Until old age bring the red flare again.”

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W.B. Yeats The Land of Heart's Desire

The Land of Heart's Desire (1894)

“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.”

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W.B. Yeats

Letter to Ellen O'Leary (3 February 1889)

“Irish poets, earn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.”

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W.B. Yeats

Under Ben Bulben http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1745/, V <br class="br">Last Poems (1936-1939)

“Hands, do what you’re bid:
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.”

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W.B. Yeats

The Balloon Of The Mind http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1595/ <br class="br">The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

“At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.”

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

Byzantium, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“Down the mountain walls
From where pan’s cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.”

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W.B. Yeats

News for the Delphic Oracle http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1546/, st. 3 <br class="br">Last Poems (1936-1939)

“You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attention upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?”

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W.B. Yeats

The Spur http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1693/ <br class="br">Last Poems (1936-1939)

“Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible.”

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W.B. Yeats livre The Tower

The Tower http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1700/, I <br class="br">The Tower (1928)

“This country will not always be an uncomfortable place for a country gentleman to live in, and it is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am afraid that Labour disagrees with me in that. On this matter I am a crusted Tory. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says "there is no wisdom without leisure."”

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W.B. Yeats

Speech, (28 March 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Damage to Property (Compensation) Bill http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/S/0001/S.0001.192303280011.html

“Because there is safety in derision
I talked about an apparition,
I took no trouble to convince,
Or seem plausible to a man of sense.”

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W.B. Yeats

The Apparitions http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1589/, st. 1 <br class="br">Last Poems (1936-1939)

“Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.”

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W.B. Yeats

Long-Legged Fly http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1525/, refrain <br class="br">Last Poems (1936-1939)

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

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W.B. Yeats

The Cat And The Moon http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1599/ <br class="br">The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

“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.”

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

V, st. 2 <br class="br">The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/

“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.”

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W.B. Yeats

Speech (7 June 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Censorship of Films Bill. http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/S/0001/S.0001.192306070006.html

“I would mould a world of fire and dew
With no one bitter, grave, or over wise,
And nothing marred or old to do you wrong.”

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W.B. Yeats The Land of Heart's Desire

The Land of Heart's Desire (1894)

“I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.”

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W.B. Yeats

The Song Of Wandering Aengus http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1690/ <br class="br">The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

“Grant me an old man’s frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call.”

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W.B. Yeats

An Acre of Grass, st. 3
Last Poems (1936-1939)

“Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied.”

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

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1471/, st. 2 <br class="br">The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“Locke sank into a swoon;
The Garden died;
God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.”

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W.B. Yeats livre The Tower

Fragments http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1484/, I <br class="br">The Tower (1928)

“The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her restless head.”

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W.B. Yeats

Source: Crossways (1889), The Song Of The Happy Shepherd, l. 1–5.

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