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

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

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

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

Come round me, little childer;

There, don't fling stones at me

Because I mutter as I go;

But pity Moll Magee.

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

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

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 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. 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

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

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

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

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

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

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

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 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

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

I

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