The Tower Quotes
Quotes
“What shall I do with this absurdity — O heart, O troubled heart?”Explanation: The poet expresses his frustration with old age. Though his body is weak, his heart and imagination are still full of passion and youth. He feels trapped in an aging body.
Explanation: Yeats reflects on the power of imagination, wondering whether creativity grows from success or loss in love. It shows his philosophical conflict between passion and memory.“Does the imagination dwell the most / Upon a woman won or woman lost?”
“Now shall I make my soul.”
Explanation: This is Yeats’s declaration of spiritual creation. He decides to shape his soul through art, wisdom, and imagination, accepting death as a step toward immortality.“Death and life were not / Till man made up the whole.”
Explanation: Yeats claims that life and death themselves are creations of the human soul. Through imagination, man gives meaning to existence and the universe.