Michael Robartes and the Dancer is a 1921 book of poems by W. B. Yeats.
“All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”
St. 1
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
St. 2
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
“It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone.”
St. 4
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
“Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.”
St. 3
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
“Nothing that we love over-much
Is ponderable to our touch.”
Towards Break of Day http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1740/, st. 3
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)
St. 1
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
St. 7
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
“They say such different things at school.”
Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)
St. 4.
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
Context: I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
St. 2
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
St. 3
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
“O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name.”
St. 4
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
St. 3
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
“Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
Oh, when may it suffice?”
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
“An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.”
St. 8
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
Source: The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose
Context: An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of plenty’s horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
Michael Robartes and the Dancer http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1535/
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)
Context: 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. 9
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
Context: 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.
St. 6
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/
