I dreamed as in my bed I lay, All night’s fathomless wisdom come, That I had shorn my locks away And laid them on Love’s lettered tomb: But something bore…

That civilisation may not sink, Its great battle lost, Quiet the dog, tether the pony To a distant post; Our master Caesar is in the tent Where the maps ate…

One that is ever kind said yesterday: ‘Your well-belovéd’s hair has threads of grey, And little shadows come about her eyes; Time can but make it easier to be wise…

That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees – Those dying generations – at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,…

God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone; From all that makes a wise old man…

O’Driscoll drove with a song The wild duck and the drake From the tall and the tufted reeds Of the drear Hart Lake. And he saw how the reeds grew…

I Swear by what the sages spoke Round the Mareotic Lake That the Witch of Atlas knew, Spoke and set the cocks a-crow. Swear by those horsemen, by those women…

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes…

Why should not old men be mad? Some have known a likely lad That had a sound fly-fisher’s wrist Turn to a drunken journalist; A girl that knew all Dante…

What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the…

A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed: and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown….

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide…