Classic Love Poems
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William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist. His early work reflected his interest in Irish legends and the occult. His first significant poem was The Isle of Statues, a fantasy work modeled after Edmund Spenser. In later years, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. Many of his poems were inspired by his undying, unrequited love for Maud Gonne, an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist, and actress. In 1923, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as “inspired poetry which, in a highly artistic form, gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”
Maud Gonne,
the Irish actress Yeats loved
(Portrait by Sarah Purser)
William Butler Yeats with wife,
Georgie Hyde-Lees, whom he married
at age 51 (she was 16),
and their two children
The Ragged Wood
O, hurry, where by water, among the trees,
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have looked upon their images
Would none had ever loved but you and I!
Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood?
O, that none ever loved but you and I!
O hurry to the ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry
O, my share of the world, O, yellow hair!
No one has ever loved but you and I.
A Poet to His Beloved
I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams,
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams,
I bring you my passionate rhyme.
The Lady’s First Song
I turn round
Like a dumb beast in a show.
Neither know what I am
Nor where I go,
My language beaten
Into one name;
I am in love
And that is my shame.
What hurts the soul
My soul adores,
No better than a beast
Upon all fours.
He Remembers Forgotten Beauty
When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old times were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through many a sacred corridor
Where such grey clouds of incense rose
That only God’s eyes did not close:
For that pale breast and lingering hand
Came from a more dream-heavy land,
A more dream-heavy hour than this;
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew,
But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
Throne over throne where in half sleep,
Their swords upon their iron knees,
Brood her high lonely mysteries.
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