Quotes from book
Michael Robartes and the Dancer

Name: Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Author: W.B. Yeats

W.B. Yeats

Michael Robartes and the Dancer is a 1921 book of poems by W. B. Yeats.

“All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 1 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

“Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

Towards Break of Day http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1740/, st. 3 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)

“I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 1 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

“To be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there’s no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)

“Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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.

“This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 2 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

“Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 4 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

“May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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?”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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?

“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.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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.

“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;”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

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.

“May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 6 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/