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| William Butler Yeats
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught. 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. But joy is wisdom, time an endless song. Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill. Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood - sex and the dead.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. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart. I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher. I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right. It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure. Life is a long preparation for something that never happens. Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all. 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? Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart. The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth. The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark. The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart. Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself. Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements. |
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