Poeticous Logo
en
English Español Français Italiano
W. B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats

A First Confession

I admit the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.
 
I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man’s attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.
 
Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?

#Irish #NobelPrize #XIXCentury #XXCentury

Enjoyed this read? Treat us to a coffee!.
Your help allows us to exist.
Other works by W. B. Yeats...
The Apparitions

BECAUSE there is safety in deri… I talked about an apparition, I took no trouble to convince, Or seem plausible to a man of sens… Distrustful of thar popular eye
The Fish

Although you hide in the ebb and f… Of the pale tide when the moon has… The people of coming days will kno… About the casting out of my net, And how you have leaped times out…
When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound

When Loie Fuller’s Chinese dance… A shining web, a floating ribbon o… It seemed that a dragon of air Had fallen among dancers, had whir… Or hurried them off on its own fur…
The Results of Thought

Acquaintance; companion; One dear brilliant woman; The best-endowed, the elect, All by their youth undone, All, all, by that inhuman
An Irish Airman Forsees His Death

I KNOW that I shall meet my fat… Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My county is Kiltartan Cross,
 1
To Some I Have Talked With by the Fire

While I wrought out these fitful… My heart would brim with dreams ab… When we bent down above the fading… And talked of the dark folk who li… Of passionate men, like bats in th…
 3
From the 'Antigone’

Overcome—O bitter sweetness, Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a… The rich man and his affairs, The fat flocks and the fields’ fat… Mariners, rough harvesters;
The Three Bushes

SAID lady once to lover, ‘None can rely upon A love that lacks its proper food; And if your love were gone How could you sing those songs of…
 1
The Man and the Echo

Man IN a cleft that’s christened Alt Under broken stone I halt At the bottom of a pit That broad noon has never lit,
 1
On Woman

MAY God be praised for woman That gives up all her mind, A man may find in no man A friendship of her kind That covers all he has brought
To Be Carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee

I, THE poet William Yeats, With old mill boards and sea-green… And smithy work from the Gort for… Restored this tower for my wife G… And may these characters remain
Where my Books go

ALL the words that I utter, And all the words that I write, Must spread out their wings untiri… And never rest in their flight, Till they come where your sad, sad…
 2
Towards Break of Day

WAS it the double of my dream The woman that by me lay Dreamed, or did we halve a dream Under the first cold gleam of day? I thought: ‘There is a waterfall
On Hearing That the Students of Our New University Have Joined the Agitation Against Immoral Literature

Where, where but here have pride a… That long to give themselves for w… To shake their wicked sides at you… Restraining reckless middle-age?
A Nativity

WHAT woman hugs her infant there… Another star has shot an ear. What made the drapery glisten so? Not a man but Delacroix. What made the ceiling waterproof?



Top