Who is william butler yeats?

Famous quotes containing the words william butler yeats, butler yeats, william butler, butler and/or yeats:

    I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
    This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestrail stair;
    That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
    Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
    O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
    How can we know the dancer from the dance?
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    When Sheba was his lass,
    When she the iron wrought, or
    When from the smithy fire
    It shuddered in the water:
    Harshness of their desire
    That made them stretch and yawn....
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    I bade, because the wick and oil are spent
    And frozen are the channels of the blood....
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    “... And maybe we are all the same
    Where no candles are,
    And maybe we are all the same
    That strip the body bare.”
    O my dear, O my dear.
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)