III, st. 2
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/
Quotes from book
The Winding Stair and Other Poems
The Winding Stair is a volume of poems by Irish poet W. B. Yeats, published in 1933. It was the next new volume after 1928's The Tower.
III, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/
II, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/
Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1471/, st. 2
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
V, st. 2
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/
Byzantium, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
Quarrel In Old Age http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1567/, st. 2
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
“Seek out reality, leave things that seem.”
Source: The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/, VII
“Only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.”
For Anne Gregory http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1483/, st. 3
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
Lullaby http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1527/, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
The Seven Sages http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1685/
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
The Choice http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1602/, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
“I am content to live it all again
And yet again,”
II, st. 3
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/
Context: I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,
A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.
“Speech after long silence; it is right”
After Long Silence http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1432/
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
Context: Speech after long silence; it is right,
All other lovers being estranged or dead,
Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant.
I, st. 3
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/
Context: My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination scorn the earth
And intellect is wandering
To this and that and t'other thing,
Deliver from the crime of death and birth.
“Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.”
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.
“Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.”
Swift's Epitaph http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1586/.
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
Context: Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.
Source: The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/, IV
Context: My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.
Byzantium http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1455/, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
Context: 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.
A Last Confession http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1404/, St. 3 & 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
Context: 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
