Quotes from book
The Winding Stair and Other Poems

Name: The Winding Stair and Other Poems
Author: W.B. Yeats

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.

“Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything that your own hands have wrought
And call those works extravagance of breath
That are not suited for such men as come
Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

III, st. 2 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/

“All women dote upon an idle man
Although their children need a rich estate.
No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

III, st. 1 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/

“I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

II, st. 4 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/

“Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1471/, st. 2 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

V, st. 2 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/

“At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

Byzantium, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“Somewhere beyond the curtain
Of distorting days
Lives that lonely thing
That shone before these eyes
Targeted, trod like Spring.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

For Anne Gregory http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1483/, st. 3 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“What were all the world’s alarms
To mighty Paris when he found
Sleep upon a golden bed
That first dawn in Helen’s arms?”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

Lullaby http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1527/, st. 1 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“Whether they knew or not,
Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the Bishop of Cloyne
All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery?
A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of drunkard’s eye.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

The Seven Sages http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1685/ The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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,”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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.

“Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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.”

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.

“Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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.

“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.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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.

“A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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.

“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”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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