Poems

 CONTENTS

Preface  

To the Third Edition

The Countess Cathleen

The Rose

To the Rose upon the Rood of Time  

Fergus and the Druid

The Death of Cuchulain

The Rose of the World

The Rose of Peace  

The Rose of Battle  

A Faery Song  

The Lake Isle of Innisfree   

A Cradle Song  

The Pity of Love  

The Sorrow of Love  

When You are Old  

The White Birds  

A Dream of Death  

A Dream of a Blessed Spirit

Who goes with Fergus

The Man who Dreamed of Faeryland  

The Dedication to a Book of Stories selected from the Irish Novelists  

The Lamentation of the Old Pensionerxiv  

The Ballad of Father Gilligan  

The Two Trees  

To Ireland in the Coming Times  

The Land of Heart's Desire

Crossways

The Song of the Happy Shepherd  

The Sad Shepherd  

The Cloak, The Boat, and the Shoes  

Anashuya and Vijaya  

The Indian upon God  

The Indian to his Love

The Falling of the Leaves

Ephemera  

The Madness of King Goll

The Stolen Child  

To an Isle in the Water

Down by the Salley Gardens

The Meditation of the Old Fisherman  

The Ballad of Father O'Hart

The Ballad of Moll Magee

The Ballad of the Foxhunter

The Wanderings of Usheen

Glossary and Notes  

About the Author

William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 - 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, and later served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

A Protestant of Anglo-Irish descent, Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland. His father practised law and was a successful portrait painter. He was educated in Dublin and London and spent his childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. While in London he became part of the Irish literary revival. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats, William Wordsworth, William Blake and many more. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, lasting roughly from his student days at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced, modernist and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

From 1900 his poetry grew more physical, realistic and politicised. He moved away from the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with some elements including cyclical theories of life. He had become the chief playwright for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1897, and early on promoted younger poets such as Ezra Pound. His major works include The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), Deirdre (1907), The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), The Tower (1928) and Last Poems and Plays (1940). ...(wikipedia.org)