My lute, awake! perform the last Labour that thou and I shall waste, An end that I have now begun;
For when this song is sung and past, My lute, be still, for I have done.
‘To his Lute’
11.139 Woodrow Wyatt (Baron Wyatt) 1919—
A man falls in love through his eyes, a woman through her ears.
‘To the Point’ (1981) p. 107
11.140 William Wycherley c.1640-1716
A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.
‘The Country Wife’ (1672-3) act 1, sc. 1
Go to your business, I say, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business.
‘The Country Wife’ (1672-3) act 2
Nay, you had both felt his desperate deadly daunting dagger:—there are your d’s for you!
‘The Gentleman Dancing-Master’ (1671-2) act 5
Fy! madam, do you think me so ill bred as to love a husband?
‘Love in a Wood’ (1671) act 3, sc. 4
You [drama critics] who scribble, yet hate all who write...
And with faint praises one another damn.
‘The Plain Dealer’ (1677) prologue
11.141 Laurie Wyman
Left hand down a bit!
‘The Navy Lark’ (BBC radio series, 1959-77)
11.142 George Wyndham 1863-1913
Over the construction of Dreadnoughts....What the people said was, ‘We want eight, and we won’t wait.’
Speech in Wigan, 27 March 1909, in ‘The Times’ 29 March 1909
11.143 Tammy Wynette (Wynette Pugh) 1942—and Billy Sherrill
Stand by your man.
Title of song (1968)
11.144 Andrew Of Wyntoun c.1350-c.1420
Quhen Alysander oure kyng wes dede, That Scotland led in luve and le, Away wes sons of ale and brede,
Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and gle; Oure gold wes changyd into lede, Cryst, borne into virgynyte, Succour Scotland, and remede,
That stad is in perplexyte.
‘The Orygynale Cronykil’ (1795 ed.) vol. 1, p. 401
12.0X
12.1Xenophon c.428/7-c.354 B.C.
The sea! the sea!
‘Anabasis’ 4, 7, 24
12.2 Augustin, Marquis De Ximènéz 1726-1817
Attaquons dans ses eaux La perfide Albion!
Let us attack in her own waters perfidious Albion!
‘L’ôre des Français’ (October 1793) in ‘Poèsies Rèvolutionnaires et contre-rèvolutionnaires’ (Paris, 1821) 1,
p.160.
13.0Y
13.1Thomas Russell Ybarra b. 1880
A Christian is a man who feels Repentance on a Sunday
For what he did on Saturday And is going to do on Monday.
‘The Christian’
13.2 W. F. Yeames R. A. 1835-1918
And when did you last see your father?
Title of painting (1878) now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
13.3 R. J. Yeatman 1898-1968
See W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman (7.55)
13.4 W. B. Yeats 1865-1939
I said ‘a line will take us hours maybe, Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.’
‘Adam’s Curse’
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’
When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a song Did not the poet sing it with such airs,
That one believed he had a sword upstairs.
‘All Things can Tempt Me’
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?
‘Among School Children’
Only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.
‘Anne Gregory’
A starlit or a moonlit dome distains All that man is;
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
‘Byzantium’
Those images that yet Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
‘Byzantium’
Now that my ladder’s gone
I must lie down where all ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’ pt. 3
I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eye As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise In walking naked.
‘A Coat’
We were the last romantics—chose for theme Traditional sanctity and loveliness; Whatever’s written in what poets name
The book of the people; whatever most can bless The mind of man or elevate a rhyme;
But all is changed, that high horse riderless, Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.
‘Coole and Ballylee, 1931’
The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work, And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
‘Coole Park and Ballylee, 1932’
The Light of Lights
Looks always on the motive, not the deed, The Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone.
‘The Countess Cathleen’ (1895) act 3
The years like great black oxen tread the world, And God the herdsman goads them on behind, And I am broken by their passing feet.
‘The Countess Cathleen’ (1895) act 4
A woman can be proud and stiff When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.
‘Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop’
Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal;
A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all.
‘Death’
He knows death to the bone— Man has created death.
‘Death’
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
‘Down by the Salley Gardens’
I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done Of a mocking tale or a gibe To please a companion Around the fire at the club, Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.
‘Easter, 1916’
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?
‘Easter, 1916’
I write it out in a verse— MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.
‘Easter, 1916’
I see a schoolboy when I think of him
With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window, For certainly he sank into his grave
His senses and his heart unsatisfied,
And made—being poor, ailing and ignorant, Shut out from all the luxury of the world, The ill-bred son of a livery stable-keeper— Luxuriant song.
‘Ego Dominus Tuus’ (referring to Keats)
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.
‘The Fascination of What’s Difficult’
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 goodnight and quickly turn away.
‘From Oedipus at Colonus’.
The ghost of Roger Casement Is beating on the door.
‘The Ghost of Roger Casement’
I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God’s will be done, I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.
‘His Phoenix’
The light of evening, Lissadell, Great windows open to the south, Two girls in silk kimonos, both Beautiful, one a gazelle.
‘In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz’
The innocent and the beautiful Have no enemy but time.
‘In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz’
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight; Sigh, heart, again in the dew of morn.
‘Into the Twilight’
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor angry crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
‘An Irish Airman Foresees his Death’
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’
The land of faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
‘The Land of Heart’s Desire’ (1894) p. 12
Land of Heart’s Desire,
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song.
‘The Land of Heart’s Desire’ (1894) p. 36
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
‘Leda and the Swan’
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.
‘Leda and the Swan’
Our master Caesar is in the tent Where the maps are spread, His eyes fixed upon nothing, A hand under his head.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.
‘Long-Legged Fly’
What were all the world’s alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed
That first night in Helen’s arms?
‘Lullaby’
We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart’s grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; Oh, honey-bees
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
‘Meditations in Time of Civil War 6: The Stare’s Nest by my Window’
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends And say my glory was I had such friends.
‘The Municipal Gallery Re-visited’
Why, what could she have done being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?
‘No Second Troy’
Where, where but here have Pride and Truth, That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth Restraining reckless middle age?
‘On hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature’
A pity beyond all telling, Is hid in the heart of love.
‘The Pity of Love’
An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn,
Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
‘A Prayer for My Daughter’
I think it better that at times like these
We poets keep our mouths shut, for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He’s had enough of meddling who can please A young girl in the indolence of her youth Or an old man upon a winter’s night.
‘A Reason for Keeping Silent’
Out of Ireland have we come. Great hatred, little room, Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb A fanatic heart.
‘Remorse for Intemperate Speech’
Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
‘The Rose of Battle’
That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees— Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish flesh or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten born and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.
‘Sailing to Byzantium’
An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress.
‘Sailing to Byzantium’
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.
‘Sailing to Byzantium’
Bald heads forgetful of their sins, Old, learned, respectable bald heads Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in love’s despair
To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.
All shuffle there; all cough in ink; All wear the carpet with their shoes; All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows. Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?
‘The Scholars’
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
‘The Second Coming’
The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
‘The Second Coming’
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.
‘September, 1913’
I thought no more was needed Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold That the heart grows old?
