I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
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More Poems by William Butler Yeats
• A Poet To His Beloved
• A Prayer For My Daughter
• A Prayer For My Son
• A Prayer On Going Into My House
• Adam's Curse
• Aedh Wishes For The Clothes Of Heaven
• Among School Children
• An Irish Airman Forsees His Death
• Are You Content?
• Before The World Was Made
• Beggar To Beggar Cried
• Byzantium
• Crazy Jane On God
• Death
• Demon And Beast
• Easter, 1916
• Ephemera
• Fallen Majesty
• He Bids His Beloved Be At Peace
• He Rembers Forgotten Beauty
• He Thinks Of Those Who Have Spoken Evil Of His Beloved
• Imitated From The Japanese
• Lapis Lazuli
• Leda And The Swan
• Long-Legged Fly
• Mohini Chatterjee
• Never Give All The Heart
• No Second Troy
• Responsibilities
• Sailing To Byzantium
• Solomon And The Witch
• Solomon To Sheba
• Spilt Milk
• The Fascination Of What's Difficult
• The Folly Of Being Comforted
• The Gyres
•
The Heart Of The Woman
•
The Indian To His Love
•
The Indian Upon God
•
The Lake Isle Of Innisfree
•
The Lover Asks Forgiveness Because Of His Many Moods
•
The Second Coming
•
The Stolen Child
•
The Two Trees
•
The Wild Swans At Coole
•
To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators Of His And Mine
•
When You Are Old
Also read poems by
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Emily Dickinson
• George Gordon, Lord Byron
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Hilaire Belloc
• John Donne
• John Keats
• Lewis Carroll
• Robert Frost
• Robert Browning
• Robert Burns
• Robert Herrick
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• Rudyard Kipling
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Sarah Teasdale
• Thomas Hardy
• Walt Whitman
• William Blake
• William Wordsworth
Yeats Easter - Poem Lyrics - William Butler Yeats - Easter, 1916
