"I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'" — William Butler Yeats

Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.