12 William Butler Yeats Quotes on Loss

William Butler Yeats quotes on loss

28. Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For those red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died.

44. I heard the old, old men say, 'Everything alters, And one by one we drop away.' They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn-trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men say, 'All that's beautiful drifts away Like the waters.'

54. I that have not your faith, how shall I know That in the blinding light beyond the grave We'll find so good a thing as that we have lost? The hourly kindness, the day's common speech, The habitual content of each with each When neither soul nor body has been crossed.

60. Have you made greatness your companion, Although it be for children that you sigh: These are the clouds about the fallen sun, The majesty that shuts his burning eye.

76. When have I last looked on The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies Of the dark leopards of the moon? All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.

83. Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.

112. 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.

117. But is there any comfort to be found? Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?

121. Come let us mock at the good That fancied goodness might be gay, And sick of solitude Might proclaim a holiday: Wind shrieked- and where are they?

132. Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.

133. 'Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,' I cried. 'My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied.'

163. A bloody and a sudden end, Gunshot or a noose, For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.