Modern

W. B. Yeats

1865–1939

Poet of the cloths and the widening gyre

He revised his early softness into something harder and did not disown the early poems. Tread softly is a lover’s request. The best lack all conviction is a political dread, from 1919, and it is not an educational proverb about pails and fires.

In the canon

  1. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams.He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  2. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.The Second Coming

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