“Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.”

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

I, st. 4 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/ Context: My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows And falls into the basin of the mind That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, For intellect no longer knows Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known — That is to say, ascends to Heaven; Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

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W.B. Yeats255

Irish poet and playwright 1865–1939

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