The wisdom here inverts the familiar proverb—Yeats isn't simply saying to seize opportunities when they arrive, but rather to *create* the conditions for success through deliberate action. Most people wait passively for the right moment, the perfect circumstance, the ideal alignment, when in truth momentum builds through the work itself. A musician who waits until she "feels inspired" to compose will find inspiration arrives only *during* the composing; the first clumsy phrases strike the iron, and the heat follows.