Quotes from book
The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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.

W.B. Yeats photo

“Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant.”

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.

W.B. Yeats photo

“The finished man among his enemies?—
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?”

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

II, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/
Context: What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
The finished man among his enemies?—
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?

W.B. Yeats photo

“But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.”

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

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop, st. 3
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)