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W. B. Yeats

To a Young Beauty

DEAR fellow-artist, why so free    
With every sort of company,    
With every Jack and Jill?    
Choose your companions from the best;    
Who draws a bucket with the rest      
Soon topples down the hill.    
 
You may, that mirror for a school,    
Be passionate, not bountiful    
As common beauties may,    
Who were not born to keep in trim
With old Ezekiel’s cherubim    
But those of Beaujolet.    
 
I know what wages beauty gives,    
How hard a life her servant lives,    
Yet praise the winters gone;
There is not a fool can call me friend,    
And I may dine at journey’s end    
With Landor and with Donne.

#IrishWriters

Other works by W. B. Yeats...
Down by the Salley Gardens

Down by the salley gardens my love… She passed the salley gardens with… She bid me take love easy, as the… But I, being young and foolish, w… In a field by the river my love an…
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Two Songs of a Fool

A SPECKLED cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence
The Fascination of What’s Difficult

The fascination of what’s difficul… Has dried the sap out of my veins,… Spontaneous joy and natural conten… Out of my heart. There’s somethin… That must, as if it had not holy b…
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Red Hanrahan’s Song About Ireland

THE old brown thorn-trees break i… Under a bitter black wind that blo… Our courage breaks like an old tre… But we have hidden in our hearts t… Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houl…
To an Isle in the Water

Shy one, shy one, Shy one of my heart, She moves in the firelight Pensively apart. She carries in the dishes,
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The Grey Rock

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In Memory of Alfred Pollexfen

FIVE-AND-TWENTY years have g… Since old William Pollexfen Laid his strong bones down in deat… By his wife Elizabeth In the grey stone tomb he made.
In Memory of Major Robert Gregory

NOW that we’re almost settled in… I’ll name the friends that cannot… Beside a fire of turf in the ancie… And having talked to some late hou… Climb up the narrow winding stair…
In Tara’s Halls

A MAN I praise that once in Tar… Said to the woman on his knees, ‘… My hundredth year is at an end.… That something is about to happen,… That the adventure of old age begi…
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Overcome—O bitter sweetness, Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a… The rich man and his affairs, The fat flocks and the fields’ fat… Mariners, rough harvesters;
Many Ingenious Lovely Things Are Gone

MANY ingenious lovely things are… That seemed sheer miracle to the m… protected from the circle of the m… That pitches common things about.… Amid the ornamental bronze and sto…
Thought from Propertius

SHE might, so noble from head To great shapely knees, The long flowing line, Have walked to the altar Through the holy images
A First Confession

I admit the briar Entangled in my hair Did not injure me; My blenching and trembling, Nothing but dissembling,
A Drunken Man’s Praise of Sobriety

COME swish around, my pretty pun… And keep me dancing still That I may stay a sober man Although I drink my fill. Sobriety is a jewel
The Ballad of Father Gilligan

The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day For half his flock were in their b… Or under green sods lay. Once, while he nodded in a chair



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