Great poems
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The Rose Of Peace
© William Butler Yeats
If Michael, leader of God's host
When Heaven and Hell are met,
Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post
He would his deeds forget.
In Memory Of Eva Gore-Booth And Con Markiewicz
© William Butler Yeats
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
Vacillation
© William Butler Yeats
Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
Remorse For Intemperate Speech
© William Butler Yeats
I ranted to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school,
Would transform the part,
Fit audience found, but cannot rule
My fanatic heart.
The Wanderings of Oisin: Book II
© William Butler Yeats
S. Patrick. Be still: the skies
Are choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind,
For God has heard, and speaks His angry mind;
Go cast your body on the stones and pray,
For He has wrought midnight and dawn and day.
Byzantium
© William Butler Yeats
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
For Anne Gregory
© William Butler Yeats
'Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'
Lapis Lazuli
© William Butler Yeats
Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instmment.
Long-Legged Fly
© William Butler Yeats
That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
Broken Dreams
© William Butler Yeats
Your beauty can but leave among us
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
A young man when the old men are done talking
Will say to an old man, 'Tell me of that lady
The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
When age might well have chilled his blood.'
A Dialogue Of Self And Soul
© William Butler Yeats
My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
Love's Loneliness
© William Butler Yeats
Old fathers, great-grandfathers,
Rise as kindred should.
If ever lover's loneliness
Came where you stood,
Pray that Heaven protect us
That protect your blood.
Death
© William Butler Yeats
Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Nocturne
© Dorothy Parker
Always I knew that it could not last
(Gathering clouds, and the snowflakes flying),
Now it is part of the golden past
(Darkening skies, and the night-wind sighing);
Ballade Of A Great Weariness
© Dorothy Parker
There's little to have but the things I had,
There's little to bear but the things I bore.
There's nothing to carry and naught to add,
And glory to Heaven, I paid the score.
The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam Of Naishapur
© Edward Fitzgerald
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
A Letter from Artemesia in the Town to Chloe in the Country
© John Wilmot
Chloe,In verse by your command I write.
Shortly you'll bid me ride astride, and fight:
These talents better with our sex agree
Than lofty flights of dangerous poetry.
Epitaph on Charles II
© John Wilmot
Here lies a great and mighty King,
Whose promise none relied on;
He never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.
Tunbridge Wells
© John Wilmot
At five this morn, when Phoebus raised his head
From Thetis' lap, I raised myself from bed,
And mounting steed, I trotted to the waters
The rendesvous of fools, buffoons, and praters,
Cuckolds, whores, citizens, their wives and daughters.
Satyr
© John Wilmot
Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange prodigious Creatures Man)
A Spirit free, to choose for my own share,
What Case of Flesh, and Blood, I pleas'd to weare,
