A couple of hours after Sunset Michael Roberts returned and told me that I would have to learn the steps of an exceedingly antique dance, because before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three times in a magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on which alone the transient and accidental could be broken, and the spirit set free.

— W.B. Yeats

A lonely impulse of delight

— W.B. Yeats

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress

— W.B. Yeats

And now he is singing a bard's curse upon you, O brother abbot, and upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather and your grandmother, ND upon all your relations.' Is he cursing in rhyme?' He is cursing in rhyme, and with two assonance in every line of his curse.'("The Crucifixion Of The Outcast")

— W.B. Yeats

An Irish Airman foresees his Death Know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love, My country is Tartan Cross, My countrymen Tartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

— W.B. Yeats

As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labor continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labor my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.

— W.B. Yeats

Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade;For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path;A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon;("Byzantium")

— W.B. Yeats

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

— W.B. Yeats

BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colors of its fruit Have dowered the stars with merry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee. There the Loves a circle go, The flaming circle of our days, Gyring, spring to and fro In those great ignorant leafy ways; Remembering all that shaken hair And how the winged sandals dart, Thine eyes grow full of tender care: Beloved, gaze in thine own heart. Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while; For there a fatal image grows That the stormy night receives, Roots half hidden under snows, Broken boughs and blackened leaves. For all things turn to barrenness In the dim glass the demons hold, The glass of outer weariness, Made when God slept in times of old. There, through the broken branches, go The ravens of resting thought; Flying, crying, to and fro, Cruel claw and hungry throat, Or else they stand and sniff the wind, And shake their ragged wings; alas! Thy tender eyes grow all unkind: Gaze no more in the bitter glass.- The Two Trees

— W.B. Yeats

Be you still, be you still, trembling heart;Remember the wisdom out of the old days:*Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways, Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood Cover over and hide, for he has no part With the lonely, majestic multitude*?

— W.B. Yeats