“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. Yeats 255

Irish poet and playwright 1865–1939

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