• EFACIS:
    YEATS Reborn Project
  • Yeats Reborn
    Browse Translations
Nov 30 2015

Browse by Poem

  • Easter 1916

    Easter 1916

     

    I have met them at close of day

    Coming with vivid faces

    From counter or desk among grey

    Eighteenth-century houses.

    I have... More

  • An Acre of Grass

    An Acre of Grass

     

    Picture and book remain,

    An acre of green grass

    For air and exercise,

    Now strength of body goes;

    Midnight, an old... More

  • The Stolen Child

    The Stolen Child

    Where dips the rocky highland
    Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
    There lies a leafy island
    Where flapping herons wake
    The drowsy water-... More

  • Love Song

    Love Song

     

    My love, we will go, we will go, I and you, And away in the woods we will scatter the dew; And the salmon behold, and the ousel too, My love, we will... More

  • The Ballad of Moll Magee

    The Ballad of Moll Magee

     

    Come round me, little childer;

    There, don't fling stones at me

    Because I mutter as I go;

    But pity Moll Magee.

    ... More
  • The Lake Isle of Innisfree

    The Lake Isle of Innisfree

     

    I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
    And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
    Nine bean rows will I... More

  • The Rose of the World

    The Rose of the World

     

    Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

    For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,

    Mournful that no new wonder may... More

  • To Ireland in the Coming Times

    TO IRELAND IN THE COMING TIMES

     

    Know, that I would accounted be

    True brother of a company

    That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,

    Ballad and... More

  • When You are Old

    When You are Old

     

    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... More

  • Fergus and the Druid

    Fergus and the Druid

     

    Fergus. This whole day have I followed in the rocks,

    And you have changed and flowed from shape to shape,

    First as a... More

  • Song of the Old Mother

    Song of the Old Mother

     

    I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
    Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
    And then I must scrub and bake and sweep... More

  • The Moods

    Literature differs from explanatory and scientific writing in being wrought about a mood, or a community of moods, as the body is wrought about an invisible soul; and if it uses... More

  • The Song of Wandering Aengus

    The Song of Wandering Aengus

     

    I went out to the hazel wood,

    Because a fire was in my head,

    And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

    And hooked a berry... More

  • William Blake and the Imagination

    William Blake and the Imagination
     
    There have been men who loved the future like a mistress... More
  • The Autumn of the Body

    THE AUTUMN OF THE BODY

    Our thoughts and emotions are often but spray flung up from hidden tides that follow a moon no eye can see. I remember that... More

  • He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

    He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

     

    Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

    Enwrought with golden and silver light,

    The blue and the dim and the dark... More

  • The Withering of the Boughs

    The Withering of the Boughs

     

    I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds:

    'Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,

    I long for your merry... More

  • The Theatre

    The Theatre

     

    I

    I remember, some years ago, advising a distinguished, though too little recognized, writer of poetical plays to write a play as unlike... More

  • The Player Queen

  • A Song from 'The Player Queen'

    A Song From ‘The Player Queen’

     

    My mother dandled me and sang,

    'How young it is, how young!'

    And made a golden cradle

    That on a willow swung... More

  • The Celtic Element in Literature

    The Celtic Element in Literature

    I

    Ernest Renan described what he held to be Celtic characteristics in The Poetry of the Celtic Races... More

  • On Baile's Strand

    ON BAILE’S STRAND.

    • Cuchullain, the King of Muirthemne.
    • Concobar, the High King of Ullad.
    • Daire, a King.
    • Fintain, a blind man.
    • Barach, a fool.... More
  • Deirdre

    DEIRDRE

     

    to

    MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL

    who in the generosity of her genius has played my Deirdre in Dublin and London with the Abbey Company, as well as... More

  • Discoveries

    DISCOVERIES.

     

    PROPHET, PRIEST AND KING

     

    The little theatrical company I write my plays for

    had come to a west of... More

  • A Woman Homer Sung

     

    A  WOMAN  HOMER  SUNG

     

    If any man drew near

    When I was young,

    I thought, “He holds her dear,”

    And shook with hate and fear.

    But... More

  • The Fascination of What's Difficult

    The Fascination of What’s Difficult

     

    The fascination of what's difficult

    Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent

    Spontaneous joy and natural... More

  • To a Poet, who would have me Praise certain Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine

    To a Poet, who would have me Praise certain Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine

     

    You say, as I have often given tongue

    In praise of what another’s said or... More

  • The Cold Heaven

    The Cold Heaven

     

    Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven

    That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more

       ice,

    And... More

  • A Coat

    A Coat

    I made my song a coat
    Covered with embroideries
    Out of old mythologies
    From heel to throat;
    But he fools caught it,
    Wore it in the... More

  • The Only Jealousy of Emer

    THE  ONLY  JEALOUSY  OF  EMER

     

     

    Persons in the Play:

     

    Three Musicians

    (their faces made... More

  • The Balloon of the Mind

    The Balloon of the Mind

     

    Hands, do what you're bid:

    Bring the balloon of the mind

    That bellies and drags in the wind

    Into its narrow shed.

  • The Dreaming of the Bones

    The Dreaming Of The Bones
     

    The stage is any bare place in a room close to the wall. A screen with a pattern of mountain and sky can stand against the wall, or a curtain with a like... More

  • The Second Coming

    THE SECOND COMING
     
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;... More
  • Solomon and the Witch

    Solomon and the Witch

     

    And thus declared that Arab lady:

    'Last night, where under the wild moon

    On grassy mattress I had laid me,

    Within my... More

  • The Cat and the Moon

    The Cat and the Moon

    1926

    to John Masefield

    Persons in the Play

    A Blind Beggar

    A Lame Beggar

    Three Musicians

     

    Scene... More

  • The Tower (I&III)

    The Tower

     

    I

    What shall I do with this absurdity –

    O heart, O troubled heart – this caricature,

    Decrepit age that has been tied to me

    As... More

  • The Wheel

    The Wheel

     

    Through winter-time we call on spring,

    And through the spring on summer call,

    And when abounding hedges ring

    Declare that winter's... More

  • Meditations in Time of Civil War

    Meditations in Time of Civil War  

     

    I.  Ancestral Houses

     

    Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns,

    Amid the rustle of his planted hills,... More

  • Sailing to Byzantium

    Sailing to Byzantium

    I

    That is no country for old men.  The young

    In one another's arms, birds in the trees

    – Those dying generations – at their song... More

  • Among School Children

    Among School Children

     

    I

    I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;

    A kind old nun in a white hood replies;

    The children learn to cipher... More

  • Leda and the Swan

    Leda and the Swan

     

    A sudden blow:  the great wings beating still

    Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

    By the dark webs, her nape caught in... More

  • Remorse for Intemperate Speech

    REMORSE  FOR  INTEMPERATE  SPEECH

     

    I ranted to the knave or fool,

    But outgrew that school,

    Would transform the part,

    Fit audience found, but... More

  • Byzantium

    Byzantium

     

    The unpurged images of day recede;

    The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;

    Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song

    After great... More

  • Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

    Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop

     

    I met the Bishop on the road
    And much said he and I.
    'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
    Those veins must... More

  • A Dialogue of Self and Soul

    A Dialogue of Self and Soul

     

    I

    My Soul.  I summon to the winding ancient stair;

    Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,

    Upon the... More

  • Meru

    Meru

    Civilisation is hooped together, brought
    Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
    By manifold illusion; but man’s life is thought,
    And he, despite... More

  • A Full Moon in March

  • What Then?

    What Then?

     

    His chosen comrades thought at school

    He must grow a famous man;

    He thought the same and lived by rule,

    All his twenties crammed... More

  • Under Ben Bulben

    UNDER  BEN  BULBEN

     

            I

    Swear by what the sages spoke

    Round the Mareotic Lake

    That the Witch of Atlas knew,

    Spoke and set at the... More

  • Those Images

    Those Images

     

    What if I bade you leave

    The cavern of the mind?

    There's better exercise

    In the sunlight and wind.

     

    I never bade... More

  • High Talk

    High Talk

     

    Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye.

    What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high,

    And... More

  • Lapis Lazuli

    Lapis Lazuli

    (For Harry Clifton)

     

    I have heard that hysterical women say

    They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.

    Of poets that are always... More

  • Long-Legged Fly

    Long-Legged Fly

     

    That civilisation may not sink,

    Its great battle lost,

    Quiet the dog, tether the pony... More

  • Politics

    Politics

     

    In our time the destiny of man presents its

    meaning in political terms.’ – Thomas Mann

     

    How can I, that girl... More

  • Purgatory

    Purgatory

     

    A ruined house and a bare tree in the background.

     

    BOY: Half door, hall door

    Hither and thither day and night

    Hill... More

  • The Circus Animals' Desertion

    The Circus Animals’ Desertion

     

    I

    I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,

    I sought it daily for six weeks or so.

    Maybe at last, being but a... More