Name: Seven Poems and a Fragment
Author: W. B. Yeats

Quotes from Seven Poems and a Fragment (W. B. Yeats)

W. B. Yeats, Seven Poems and a Fragment

“ No living man can drink from the whole wine.
I have mummy truths to tell
Whereat the living mock,
Though not for sober ear,
For maybe all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Such thought—such thought have I that hold it tight
Till meditation master all its parts,
Nothing can stay my glance
Until that glance run in the world’s despite
To where the damned have howled away their hearts,
And where the blessed dance;
Such thought, that in it bound
I need no other thing
Wound in mind’s wandering,
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

W. B. Yeats, Seven Poems and a Fragment

“ I knew that horse play, knew it for a murderous thing.
What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat
And that alone, yet I being driven half insane
Because of some green wing, gathered old mummy wheat
In the mad abstract dark and ground it grain by grain
And after baked it slowly in an oven; but now
I bring full flavoured wine out of a barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander’s empire past, they slept so sound.
Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep ”

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Source: Gutenberg

W. B. Yeats, Seven Poems and a Fragment

“ There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,
That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.
14
THE NEW FACES
If you, that have grown old were the first dead
Neither Caltapa tree nor scented lime
Should hear my living feet, nor would I tread
Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of time.
Let the new faces play what tricks they will
In the old rooms; night can outbalance day,
Our shadows rove the garden gravel still,
The living seem more shadowy than they. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

W. B. Yeats, Seven Poems and a Fragment

“ Exalts the soul; nor song nor trumpet-blast
Can call up races from the worsening world
To mend the wrong and mar the solitude
Of the great shade we follow to the tomb.
(Fedelm and the pupils go out carrying the litter. Some play
a mournful music.) ”

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Source: Gutenberg

W. B. Yeats, Seven Poems and a Fragment

“ We are impatient men,
So gather up the halters in your hands.
KING.
Drive them away.
(He goes into the palace. The soldiers block the way before
the pupils.)
SOLDIER.
Here is no place for you,
For he and his pretensions now are finished.
Begone before the men at arms are bidden
21
To hurl you from the door.
OLDEST PUPIL.
Take up his body
And cry that driven from the populous door
He seeks high waters and the mountain birds
To claim a portion of their solitude.
(They make a litter with cloak and staffs and lay Seanchan
on it.) ”

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Source: Gutenberg

W. B. Yeats, Seven Poems and a Fragment

“ The country people see at times certain apparitions whom they name now ‘fallen angels’ now ‘ancient inhabitants of the country,’ and describe as riding at whiles ‘with flowers upon the heads of the horses.’ I have assumed in the sixth poem that these horsemen, now that the times worsen, give way to worse. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

W. B. Yeats, Seven Poems and a Fragment

“ Are not those who travel in the whirling dust also in the Platonic Year?—W. B. Y.
24
NOTE ON THE NEW END TO ‘THE KING’S THRESHOLD’
Upon the revival of this play at the Abbey Theatre a few weeks ago it was played with this new end. There were a few other changes. I had originally intended to end the play tragically and would have done so but for a friend who used to say ‘O do write comedy & have a few happy moments in the Theatre.’ My unhappy moments were because a tragic effect is very fragile and a wrong intonation, or even a wrong light or costume will spoil it all. ”

W. B. Yeats

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Quotes from Seven Poems and a Fragment (W. B. Yeats)

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W. B. Yeats

Summary

Quotes from Seven Poems and a Fragment (W. B. Yeats)

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Get perspective with Kwize: daily news enlightened by great literature