William Butler Yeats Quotes on Change
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The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head.
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Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song. All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other's We were so much at one. But O, in a minute she changed-- O do not love too long, Or you will grow out of fashion Like an old song.
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I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.
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The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.
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Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter, seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream.
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Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart.
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Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.
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Many ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, protected from the circle of the moon That pitches common things about.
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O what fine thought we had because we thought That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
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All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned, And a great army but a showy thing; What matter that no cannon had been turned Into a ploughshare?
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O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
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Whence had they come, The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived? Supernatural Songs, VIII, Whence Had They Come?