This page has some of my favorite poems by the great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats. W. B. Yeats spent a lot of time in the County Sligo area of Ireland and wrote about the area. I've been to many of the places about which he wrote. Here are some of those poems:
The Lake Isle
of Inisfree
by W. B. Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Inisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And I live alone in the bee loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
The Fiddler of
Dooney
by W. B. Yeats
When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.
I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.
When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate.
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance:
And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!'
And dance like a wave of the sea.
O Do Not Love Too
Long
by W. B. Yeats
Sweetheart, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like and old song.
All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other's,
We were so much at one
But O, in a minute she changed-
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song.