He was my North, my South, my East and West,My working week and my Sunday rest,My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.For nothing now can ever come to any good.

All the rest is silenceOn the other side of the wall;And the silence ripeness,And the ripeness all.

Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.

The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:The parish of rich women, physical decay,Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,For poetry makes nothing happen: it survivesIn the valley of its making where executivesWould never want to tamper, flows on southFrom ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,A way of happening, a mouth.

for once in our lives / Everything became a You and nothing was an It.

The mass and majesty of this world, allThat carries weight and always weighs the sameLay in the hands of others; they were smallAnd could not hope for help and no help came:What their foes like to do was done, their shameWas all the worst could wish; they lost their prideAnd died as men before their bodies died.

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.