William Butler Yeats cytaty

strona 2

Źródło: Modlitwa za mą córkę, tłum. Piotr Siemion

Źródło: Poeta pragnie szaty niebios (ang. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven) z tomu Wiatr pośród trzcin, 1899, tłum. Leszek Engelking

Źródło: Drugie przyjście, tłum. Leszek Engelking

Źródło: Poeta pragnie szaty niebios, tłum. Ludmiła Marjańska

Źródło: Pamięć, 1919, tłum. Maciej Cisło

St. 1
Cf. Nelson Algren's later, "That was no town for the aged or the aging."
The Tower (1928), Sailing to Byzantium http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1575/
Kontekst: That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

Last Poems (1936-1939)
Kontekst: No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

Against Unworthy Praise http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1433/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
Kontekst: 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

Reconciliation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1568/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
Kontekst: Some may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day
When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind
With lightning, you went from me, and I could find
Nothing to make a song about but kings,
Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things
That were like memories of you--but now
We'll out, for the world lives as long ago;
And while we're in our laughing, weeping fit,
Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit.
But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.

St. 9
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
Kontekst: All hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1723/
Responsibilities (1914)
Kontekst: Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

St. 3
The Rose (1893), The Rose of the World
Kontekst: Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

The Coming Of Wisdom With Time http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1607/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)

When You Are Old http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1756/, st. 1–3
The Rose (1893)
Kontekst: 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

Michael Robartes and the Dancer http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1535/
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)
Kontekst: Opinion is not worth a rush;
In this altar-piece the knight,
Who grips his long spear so to push
That dragon through the fading light,
Loved the lady; and it’s plain
The half-dead dragon was her thought,
That every morning rose again
And dug its claws and shrieked and fought.
Could the impossible come to pass
She would have time to turn her eyes,
Her lover thought, upon the glass
And on the instant would grow wise.

St. 4
The Tower (1928), Sailing to Byzantium http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1575/
Kontekst: Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

O Do Not Love Too Long http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1549/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Kontekst: 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.

A Last Confession http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1404/, St. 3 & 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
Kontekst: p>I gave what other women gave
That stepped out of their clothes.
But when this soul, its body off,
Naked to naked goes,
He it has found shall find therein
What none other knows,And give his own and take his own
And rule in his own right;
And though it loved in misery
Close and cling so tight,
There’s not a bird of day that dare
Extinguish that delight.</p

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1441/
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
Kontekst: I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My county is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1736/
The Rose (1893)
Kontekst: Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;

St. 3
In The Seven Woods (1904), Adam's Curse http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1431/
Kontekst: It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.

I, st. 5-6
The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/
Kontekst: But is there any comfort to be found?
Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
What more is there to say?

Last Poems (1936-1939)
Kontekst: Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

Lapis Lazuli, st. 2

O Do Not Love Too Long http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1549/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Kontekst: 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.

The Folly Of Being Comforted http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1623/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Kontekst: One that is ever kind said yesterday:
'Your well-belovéd's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience.'
Heart cries, 'No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.'
O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.

The Arrow http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1590/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Kontekst: I thought of your beauty, and this arrow,
Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.
There's no man may look upon her, no man,
As when newly grown to be a woman,
Tall and noble but with face and bosom
Delicate in colour as apple blossom.
This beauty's kinder, yet for a reason
I could weep that the old is out of season.

"If I Were Four-and-Twenty," printed in Irish Statesman (23 August 1919)
Kontekst: One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep: "Hammer your thoughts into unity." For days I could think of nothing else, and for years I tested all I did by that sentence.

Against Unworthy Praise http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1433/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
Kontekst: 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

Byzantium http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1455/, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
Kontekst: The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers’ song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

II, st. 2
The Tower (1928), Two Songs From a Play http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1741/
Kontekst: Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
Love’s pleasure drives his love away,
The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.

I, st. 1
The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/
Kontekst: Many ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
protected from the circle of the moon
That pitches common things about.

The Dawn http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1612/
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
Kontekst: I would be ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;
I would be — for no knowledge is worth a straw —
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

A Coat http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1393/
Responsibilities (1914)
Kontekst: I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.

St. 4
The Tower (1928), Sailing to Byzantium http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1575/
Kontekst: Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.