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W. B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats

Oil and Blood

In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

#IrishWriters #NobelPrize #1933 #TheWindingStairAndOtherPoems

Other works by W. B. Yeats...
Cuchulain’s Fight With the Sea

A man came slowly from the setting… To Emer, raddling raiment in her… And said, “I am that swineherd wh… Go watch the road between the wood… But now I have no need to watch i…
Among School Children

I walk through the long schoolroom… A kind old nun in a white hood rep… The children learn to cipher and t… To study reading-books and histori… To cut and sew, be neat in everyth…
 1
The Folly of Being Comforted

ONE that is ever kind said yester… ‘Your well-beloved’s hair has thre… And little shadows come about her… Time can but make it easier to be… Though now it seems impossible, an…
 1
In Tara’s Halls

A MAN I praise that once in Tar… Said to the woman on his knees, ‘… My hundredth year is at an end.… That something is about to happen,… That the adventure of old age begi…
Crazy Jane on God

That lover of a night Came when he would, Went in the dawning light Whether I would or no; Men come, men go;
The Nineteenth Century and After

Though the great song return no mo… There’s keen delight in what we ha… The rattle of pebbles on the shore Under the receding wave.
Crazy Jane and the Bishop

Bring me to the blasted oak That I, midnight upon the stroke, (All find safety in the tomb.) May call down curses on his head Because of my dear Jack that’s de…
After Long Silence

Speech after long silence; it is r… All other lovers being estranged o… Unfriendly lamplight hid under its… The curtains drawn upon unfriendly… That we descant and yet again desc…
 3
The Withering of the Boughs

I CRIED when the moon was mutmu… ‘Let peewit call and curlew cry wh… I long for your merry and tender a… For the roads are unending, and th… The honey-pale moon lay low on the…
Broken Dreams

THERE is grey in your hair. Young men no longer suddenly catch… When you are passing; But maybe some old gaffer mutters… Because it was your prayer
 4
To Dorothy Wellesley

STRETCH towards the moonless mi… As though that hand could reach to… And they but famous old upholsteri… Delightful to the touch; tighten t… As though to draw them closer yet.
The Delphic Oracle Upon Plotinus

Behold that great Plotinus swim, Buffeted by such seas; Bland Rhadamanthus beckons him, But the Golden Race looks dim, Salt blood blocks his eyes.
The Dedication to a Book of Stories

SELECTED FROM THE IR… THERE was a green branch hung wi… When her own people ruled this tra… And from its murmuring greenness,… A Druid kindness, on all hearers…
A First Confession

I admit the briar Entangled in my hair Did not injure me; My blenching and trembling, Nothing but dissembling,
Sweet Dancer

THE girl goes dancing there On the leaf-sown, new-mown, smooth Grass plot of the garden; Escaped from bitter youth, Escaped out of her crowd,
 1



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