So much to say, so little time. Yeats, as a poet, has always been one of my favorites, but what truly inspires me is his work in Irish theatre, and the creation of the Abbey. An amazing story. His Nobel lecture was on the Irish Dramatic Movement<\/a>. I wrote a big long post about his nurturing of John Synge<\/a>, author of The Playboy of the Western World<\/a> Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” has always frightened and enthralled me. It’s like a nightmare. A quiet stealthy nightmare. Or a dark ominous crystal ball that shows awful things approaching and yet you still can’t look away.<\/p>\n “The Second Coming” Surely some revelation is at hand; And here … now … a plethora of Yeats quotes. I end with one of my favorites.<\/p>\n “I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.”<\/p>\n “Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.”<\/p>\n “The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.”<\/p>\n “Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.”<\/p>\n “Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.”<\/p>\n “And say my glory was I had such friends.”<\/p>\n Yes. That last one really moves me. I feel the same way about my life, and my friends.<\/p>\n Never give all the heart<\/i> I also love love LOVE his poem to Jonathan Swift where he writes: “Imitate him if you dare.” Totally. A warning to those who think it might be easy.<\/p>\n Swift’s Epitaph<\/i> And lastly, a poem that has great personal meaning for me:<\/p>\n The wild swans at Coole<\/i> The nineteenth autumn has come upon me I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, Unwearied still, lover by lover, But now they drift on the still water, Happy birthday to the incomparable William Butler Yeats. Imitate him if you dare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" William Butler Yeats. The O’Malley children were made to memorize Yeats’ epitaph as part of our weekly allowance ritual. Say Yeat’s epitaph, get a dime!! Such were the rules in our house. Nothing, and I say NOTHING, could obliterate that … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0486275620\")
\nTURNING and turning in the widening gyre
\nThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;
\nThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;
\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst
\nAre full of passionate intensity.<\/p>\n
\nSurely the Second Coming is at hand.
\nThe Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
\nWhen a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
\nTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
\nA shape with lion body and the head of a man,
\nA gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
\nIs moving its slow thighs, while all about it
\nReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
\nThe darkness drops again; but now I know
\nThat twenty centuries of stony sleep
\nWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
\nAnd what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
\nSlouches towards Bethlehem to be born?<\/p>\n
\nNever give all the heart, for love
\nWill hardly seem worth thinking of
\nTo passionate women if it seem
\nCertain, and they never dream
\nThat it fades out from kiss to kiss;
\nFor everything that’s lovely is
\nBut a brief, dreamy. Kind delight.
\nO never give the heart outright,
\nFor they, for all smooth lips can say,
\nHave given their hearts up to the play.
\nAnd who could play it well enough
\nIf deaf and dumb and blind with love?
\nHe that made this knows all the cost,
\nFor he gave all his heart and lost.<\/p>\n
\nSWIFT has sailed into his rest;
\nSavage indignation there
\nCannot lacerate his breast.
\nImitate him if you dare,
\nWorld-besotted traveller; he
\nServed human liberty.<\/p>\n
\nTHE trees are in their autumn beauty,
\nThe woodland paths are dry,
\nUnder the October twilight the water
\nMirrors a still sky;
\nUpon the brimming water among the stones
\nAre nine-and-fifty Swans.<\/p>\n
\nSince I first made my count;
\nI saw, before I had well finished,
\nAll suddenly mount
\nAnd scatter wheeling in great broken rings
\nUpon their clamorous wings.<\/p>\n
\nAnd now my heart is sore.
\nAll’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
\nThe first time on this shore,
\nThe bell-beat of their wings above my head,
\nTrod with a lighter tread.<\/p>\n
\nThey paddle in the cold
\nCompanionable streams or climb the air;
\nTheir hearts have not grown old;
\nPassion or conquest, wander where they will,
\nAttend upon them still.<\/p>\n
\nMysterious, beautiful;
\nAmong what rushes will they build,
\nBy what lake’s edge or pool
\nDelight men’s eyes when I awake some day
\nTo find they have flown away?<\/p>\n