Selected poems

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
Biography: https://poets.org/poet/w-b-yeats

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (1890)

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,[5]

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;[10]

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core. ^[1]

“Easter, 1916” (1916)

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[5]

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[10]

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:[15]

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.[20]

What voice more sweet than hers

When, young and beautiful,

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school 

And rode our wingèd horse;[25]

This other his helper and friend

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end, 

So sensitive his nature seemed,

So daring and sweet his thought.[30]

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,

Yet I number him in the song;[35]

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.[40]

Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seem

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,[45]

The rider, the birds that range

From cloud to tumbling cloud,

Minute by minute they change; 

A shadow of cloud on the stream

Changes minute by minute;[50]

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,

And a horse plashes within it; 

The long-legged moor-hens dive,

And hens to moor-cocks call;

Minute by minute they live:[55]

The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven’s part, our part[60]

To murmur name upon name,

As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild. 

What is it but nightfall?[65]

No, no, not night but death;

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith 68

For all that is done and said.

We know their dream; enough[70]

To know they dreamed and are dead;

And what if excess of love 

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride[75]

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.[80]^[2]

“The Second Coming” (1919)

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[5]

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.[10]

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,[15]

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it 

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, [20]

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?^[3]