William Butler Yeats

What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms?

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.

Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead . . . That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.

I carry the sun in a golden cup, The moon in a silver bag.

Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love's pleasure drives his love away, The painter's brush consumes his dreams.

I see my life go drifting like a river From change to change; I have been many things -  A green drop in the surge, a gleam of light Upon a sword, a fir tree on a hill,  An old slave grinding at a heavy quern, A king sitting upon a chair of gold -  And all these things were wonderful and great; But now I have grown nothing, knowing all. Ah! Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrow Lay hidden in that small slate-coloured thing!

I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.

Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.