William Butler Yeats Quotes About Aging

Quotes about: Aging

• An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick

  William Butler Yeats

  Time, Men, Elderly

  "Sailing to Byzantium" l. 9 (1928)

• but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream, Retirement, Flower

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.222, Penguin

• 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.

  William Butler Yeats

  Fear, Heart, Night

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.210, Simon and Schuster

• I thought no more was needed
  Youth to prolong
  Than dumb-bell and foil
  To keep the body young.
  O who could have foretold
  That the heart grows old?

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Sadness, Dumb

  'A Song'

• I have nothing but the embittered sun;
  Banished heroic mother moon and vanished,
  And now that I have come to fifty years
  I must endure the timid sun.

  William Butler Yeats

  Mother, Moon, Reality

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.109, Library of Alexandria

• Nor bird nor beast
  Could make me wish for anything this day,
  Being old, but that the old alone might die,
  And that would be against God's Providence.

  William Butler Yeats

  Bird, Wish, Would Be

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

• O heart, we are old;
  The living beauty is for younger men:
  We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Men, Tears

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “"Easter, 1916" and Other Poems”, p.9, Courier Corporation

• I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
  Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
  And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
  Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep;
  And the young lie long and dream in their bed.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream, Stars, Work

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.48, Wordsworth Editions

• The hare grows old as she plays in the sun
  And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;
  Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done
  She limps along in an aged whiteness.

  William Butler Yeats

  Eye, Play, Age

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.40, Penguin

• Though I have many words,
  What woman's satisfied,
  I am no longer faint
  Because at her side?
  O who could have foretold
  That the heart grows old?

  William Butler Yeats

  Women, Heart, Sides

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.27, Hayes Barton Press

• I thought it out this very day,
  Noon upon the clock,
  A man may put pretence away
  Who leans upon a stick,
  May sing, and sing until he drop,
  Whether to maid or hag.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Noon, Redemption

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.271, Simon and Schuster

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