W. B. Yeats

“ MARTIN.
[Standing beside the rock where the lighted candles are.]
Et calix meus inebrians quam præclarus est!
FATHER JOHN.
I must know what he has to say. It is not from himself he is speaking.
MARTIN.
Father John, Heaven is not what we have believed it to be. It is not quiet, it is not singing and making music, and all strife at an end. I have seen it, I have been there. The lover still loves but with a greater passion, and the rider still rides but the horse goes like the wind and leaps the ridges, and the battle goes on always, always. That is the joy of Heaven, continual battle. ”

“ KAGEKIYO Living here....
CHORUS (going on with Kagekiyo's thought) I go on living here, hated by the people in power. A blind man without his staff, I am deformed, and therefore speak evil; excuse me.
KAGEKIYO My eyes are darkened.
CHORUS Though my eyes are dark I understand the thoughts of another. I understand at a word. The wind comes down from the pine trees on the mountain, and snow comes down after the wind. The dream tells of my glory, I am loth to wake from the dream. I hear the waves running in the evening tide, as when I was with Heike. ”

“ O, men who have no part in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom, but dwell with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot touch you as they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons cannot sweep about you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a curse, and change you to an example for ever and ever; you shall become grey herons and stand pondering in grey pools and flit over the world in that hour when it is most full of sighs, having forgotten the flame of the stars and not yet found the flame of the sun ”

“ The poet must not seek for what is still and fixed, for that has no life for him; and if he did, his style would become cold and monotonous, and his sense of beauty faint and sickly, as are both style and beauty to my imagination in the prose and poetry of Newman, but be content to find his pleasure in all that is for ever passing away that it may come again, in the beauty of woman, in the fragile flowers of spring, in momentary heroic passion, in whatever is most fleeting, most impassioned, as it were, for its own perfection, most eager to return in its glory. ”

“ Be silent, fool.
Another King.
Be silent, Daire.
Concobar.
Let him speak his mind.
I have no need to be afraid of ghosts,
For I have made but necessary wars.
I warred to strengthen Emain, or because
When wars are out they marry and beget
And have their generations like mankind
And there’s no help for it; but I’m well content
That they have ended and left the town so great,
That its mere name shall be in times to come
Like a great ale vat where the men of the world
Shall drink no common ale but the hard will,
The unquenchable hope, the friendliness of the sword. ”

“ THE ANGEL. The light beats down; the gates of pearl are wide. And she is passing to the floor of peace, And Mary of the seven times wounded heart Has kissed her lips, and the long blessed hair Has fallen on her face; The Light of Lights Looks always on the motive, not the deed, The Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone.
(ALEEL releases the ANGEL and kneels.)
OONA. Tell them who walk upon the floor of peace That I would die and go to her I love; 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. ”

“ Instead of learning their craft with paper and a pen they may have sat for hours imagining themselves to be stocks and stones and beasts of the wood, till the images were so vivid that the passers-by became but a part of the imagination of the dreamer, and wept or laughed or ran away as he would have them. Have not poetry and music arisen, as it seems, out of the sounds the enchanters made to help their imagination to enchant, to charm, to bind with a spell themselves and the passers-by? ”

“ Since I was a boy I have always longed to hear poems spoken to a harp, as I imagined Homer to have spoken his, for it is not natural to enjoy an art only when one is by oneself. Whenever one finds a fine verse one wants to read it to somebody, and it would be much less trouble and much pleasanter if we could all listen, friend by friend, lover by beloved. Images used to rise up before me, as I am sure they have arisen before nearly everybody else who cares for poetry, of wild-eyed men speaking harmoniously to murmuring wires while audiences in many-coloured robes listened, hushed and excited. ”

“ DEIRDRE.
Safety and peace!
I had them when a child, but never since.
FERGUS.
Men blame you that you have stirred a quarrel up
That has brought death to many. I have poured
Water upon the fire, but if you fly
A second time the house is in a blaze
And all the screaming household can but blame
The savage heart of beauty for it all;
And Naisi that but helped to tar the wisp
Be but a hunted outlaw all his days.
DEIDRE.
I will be blamed no more! there’s but one way.
I’ll spoil this beauty that brought misery
And houseless wandering on the man I loved,
And so buy peace between him and the king. ”

“ To speak of one's emotions without fear or moral ambition, to come out from under the shadow of other men's minds, to forget their needs, to be utterly oneself, that is all the Muses care for. Villon, pander, thief, and man-slayer, is as immortal in their eyes, and illustrates in the cry of his ruin as great a truth as Dante in abstract ecstasy, and touches our compassion more. All art is the disengaging of a soul from place and history, its suspension in a beautiful or terrible light, to await the Judgement, and yet, because all its days were a Last Day, judged already. ”

“ O Death's old bony finger Will never find us there In the high hollow townland Where love's to give and to spare; Where boughs have fruit and blossom At all times of the year; Where rivers are running over With red beer and brown beer. An old man plays the bagpipes In a gold and silver wood; Queens, their eyes blue like the ice, Are dancing in a crowd. The little fox he murmured, 'O what of the world's bane?' The sun was laughing sweetly, The moon plucked at my rein ”

“ I would always admire it, but just now, when I have been thinking that literature should return to its old habit of describing desirable things, I am in the mood to be stirred by that old man gathering up food for fowl with his heart full of love, and by those children who are so full of the light-hearted curiosity of childhood, and by that schoolmaster who has mixed prayer with his gentle punishments. It seems natural that so beautiful a prayer as that of the old saint should have come out of a life so full of innocence and peace. ”

“ The more I tried to make my art deliberately beautiful, the more did I follow the opposite of myself, for deliberate beauty is like a woman always desiring man’s desire. Presently I found that I entered into myself and pictured myself and not some essence when I was not seeking beauty at all, but merely to lighten the mind of some burden of love or bitterness thrown upon it by the events of life. We are only permitted to desire life, and all the rest should be our complaints or our praise of that exacting mistress who can awake our lips into song with her kisses. ”

“ Into the power of faeries!
BRIDGET BRUIN.
You know, well
How calling the good people by that name
Or talking of them over much at all
May bring all kinds of evil on the house.
MAIRE BRUIN.
Come, faeries, take me out of this dull house!
Let me have all the freedom I have lost—
Work when I will and idle when I will!
Faeries, came take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame!
FATHER HART.
You cannot know the meaning of your words! ”

“ CUCHULLAIN.
(Comes in and says to the fool) Give me that horn.
(The fool gives him a horn which Cuchullain fills with ale and drinks.)
FINTAIN.
Do not listen to him, listen to me.
CUCHULLAIN.
What are you wrangling over?
BARACH.
He is fat and good for nothing. He has left me the bones and the feathers.
CUCHULLAIN.
What feathers?
BARACH.
I left him turning a fowl at the fire. He ate it all. He left me nothing but the bones and feathers.
FINTAIN.
Do not believe him. You do not know how vain this fool is. I gave him the feathers, because I thought he would like nothing so well. ”