William Butler Yeats Night Quotations

Where got I that truth? Out of a medium's mouth, Out of nothing it came, Out of the forest loam, Out of dark night where lay The crowns of Nineveh

The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day; For half his flock were in their beds, Or under green sods lay.

I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit...

All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right.

Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night....

Whatever flames upon the night Man's own resinous heart has fed.

The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.

In luck or out the toil has left its mark: That old perplexity an empty purse, Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.

I would that there was nothing in the world But my beloved that night and day had perished, And all that is and all that is to be, All that is not the meeting of our lips.

When a man grows old his joy Grows more deep day after day, His empty heart is full at length But he has need of all that strength Because of the increasing Night That opens her mystery and fright.

While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof, His "Morning" and his "Night" disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.