The fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There's somethin… - William Butler Yeats
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The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt That must, as if it had not holy blood Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud, Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theatre business, management of men. I swear before the dawn comes round again I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.
William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish symbolist poet, dramatist and mystic. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He compiled the Oxford Book of Modern Verse.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, George Charles Beresford (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
W. B. Yeats
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William Yeats
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W.B. Yeats
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WBY
Was it for this the wild geese spread The grey wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbours’ eyes? Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing string Whereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone, Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.
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Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay good night and quickly turn away.
