When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
W.B. Yeats
Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire
education fire
sleep shadows dream book fire deep eyes read
Why should not old men be mad?
men mad
For he would be thinking of loveTill the stars had run awayAnd the shadows eaten the moon.
shadows stars moon thinking run
Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.
poetry literature men art memory desperate battle daughter hope beloved
The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed the doorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness except the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow.
slavery anger necessity life imagination glory destiny steel mind peace death time beauty history moment christianity human shakespeare experience thought world sorrow historical book moments artistic terror flower dawn individual gods delight pleasure birds passions bitterness triumph ecstasy sacrifices rose interest bound hand calm blue mirror faces symbolism red rule pagan form house god books dull custom
Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal; A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all.
man death prayer afterlife animal dying hope dread
An aged man is but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unlessSoul clap its hands and sing, and louder singFor every tatter in its mortal dress
poetry death ageing
I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
poetry fate clouds
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
joy tragedy irish
Never give all the heart, for loveWill hardly seem worth thinking ofTo passionate women if it seemCertain, and they never dreamThat it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely isBut a brief, dreamy, kind delight.O Never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enoughIf deaf and dumb and blind with love?He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.
passion loss heartbreak acting play
To long a sacrifice can make a stone of a heart
I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough'; wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love.
Love comes in at the eye.
THAT crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Her soul in division from itselfClimbing, falling She knew not where, Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declareA beautiful lofty thing, or a thingHeroically lost, heroically found. No matter what disaster occurredShe stood in desperate music wound, Wound, wound, and she made in her triumphWhere the bales and the baskets layNo common intelligible soundBut sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea
sound music song lost girl hungry wounds found sea ireland
Showing 1 to 15 of 52 results
You must log in to post a comment.
There are no comments yet.