Emotions and Feelings

I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch.

The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.

What they undertook to do They brought to pass; All things hang like a drop of dew Upon a blade of grass.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

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.

What shall I do with this absurdity— O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog’s tail?

Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?

Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?

An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?

If there’s no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

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?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart 5 ; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?

All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, For all their broomsticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.

In dreams begins responsibility. 4

The fascination of what’s difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.

The fascination of what’s difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.

Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?