The Collected Poetry of William Butler Yeats
By W B Yeats
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W B Yeats
William Butler Yeats is widely regarded as one of the finest English language poets. His eclectic output frequently draws on his chief passions for the occult and the history of his homeland. The poetry, while often mystical and romantic, can also be gritty, realistic and frequently political. Yeats was also a major playwright and founded the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
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Reviews for The Collected Poetry of William Butler Yeats
532 ratings14 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yeats moves in my thoughts and in my life everyday. I have two battered collections of his poems, the first given me by a now dead friend. Who else has such music, or such passion?
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful. I regularly return to this collection and reread them at random, out loud, to savor the language - a sign of poetry done right.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I have enjoyed the poetry of William Butler Yeats for many years as evidenced by my well-worn copy of his Complete Poems. But there is more to enjoy when considering this protean author for throughout his long life, William Butler Yeats produced important works in every literary genre, works of astonishing range, energy, erudition, beauty, and skill. His early poetry is memorable and moving. His poems and plays of middle age address the human condition with language that has entered our vocabulary for cataclysmic personal and world events. "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,How can we know the dancer from the dance?"("Among School Children", p 105)The writings of his final years offer wisdom, courage, humor, and sheer technical virtuosity. T. S. Eliot pronounced Yeats "the greatest poet of our time -- certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language" and "one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them."There are always new things to be learned when reading and meditating on the poetry of this masterful author.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats by William B. YeatsThe Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats by William Butler Yeats has a gift for language even when the subject of his poetry falls into the repetition of Irish myths. His way with words is astounding and his poems about God and angels speak to me.There is no doubt that he is a Shakespeare with his words, but he is always good and very enjoyable on rainy days. One of my favorite poems:"A mermaid found a swimming lad, picked him for her own,pressed her body to his body, laughed; and plunging down, forgot in cruel happiness that even lovers drown."Pure magic. I loved this book of poetry.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The best of the best.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This anthology is thorough and well-organized. Yeats is one of the greatest poets of all time, and a student of his work cannot go wrong with this anthology. The notes on his works are not intrusive but provide just enough background.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My favorite book I have ever owned.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lyrical, mystical, beautifully crafted. Yeats not only spoke to the his time and place, he transcended.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yeats has a knack for approaching emotions and situations obliquely and obscurely at first, and yet somehow hitting them right on by the time he's through. A perfect subtlety, dancing on the thin line between pathos and authenticity.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5From his early Romantic poems to his later more visionary verse ensnared in occult and spritual symbolism, Yeats body of work is indispensable for any student of poetry. A cornerstone of Ireland's literary tradition.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I have given hourlong recitations of Yeats's poems, among the easiest to recall in English; for example, his tetrameters in the late "Under Ben Bulben" which contains his epitaph. I defy you to say this aloud three times without knowing most of it by heart: "Whether man die in his bed,/ Or the rifle knocks him dead,/ A brief parting from those dear/ Is the worst man has to fear." And his own epitaph is memorable, "Cast a cold eye/ On life, on death/ Horseman, pass by!" It is anti-conventional, since most epitaphs were written by clergy to scare the readers back to church, like this one in Pittsfield, MA: "Corruption, earth and worms/ Shall but refine this flesh..." etc. I seriously doubt the interred was consulted about that one. Yeats counters, look at this grave, and fogggetaboutit, Pass by!By memory I still have "When you are old," his adaptation of Ronsard, "Lake Isle of Innisfree," so imitative of the water lapping the shores, in its medial caesuras, "I hear lake water lapping...Though I stand on the roadway..I shall arise and go now..." And so interesting that WBY first had a truism, "There noon is all a glimmer, and midnight a purple glow," which he reversed to the memorable, "There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon has a purple glow..." Ahh... a useful trick for writers. (My Ph.D. advisor Leonard Unger noted the influence of Meredith on Innisfree.) "The Second Coming," whose opening I said in my flight fears of landing. The problem in reciting that poem is "The worst are full of passionate intensity." I had to reduce the intensity of my aloudreading. "Sailing to Byzantium," and ohers.I have also set to music seven of Yeats' poems, including "Brown Penny," "Lullaby," "Her Anxiety," and even "Crazy Jane talks to the Bishop." Some of these tunes, played decades ago, can be heard on my google+ page, no middle initial.Yeats's son Michael, fathered in his late fifties, toured the US in the 70s. A friend in the Berkshires heard him recall his father mainly shooing him from the room to write or recite. Sounds accurate. (Maybe that's why Shakespeare lived in London, his kids in Stratford!)I mentioned learning Yeats at Leonard Unger's knee, but also from Chester Anderson, Joycean and Irish specialist
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One of the most powerful voices in English-language poetry of the twentieth century. Lots of symbolism, some of it is quite arcane, but much is easily accessible.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not my favourite recent poetry reads though still very evocative in places.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My favorite poet, and the ultimate volume of his poetry.
Book preview
The Collected Poetry of William Butler Yeats - W B Yeats
THE COLLECTED POETRY
OF
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Collected Poetry of William Butler Yeats
By William Butler Yeats
Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5758-7
eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5759-4
This edition copyright © 2018. Digireads.com Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Cover Image: a detail of a portrait of W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), c. 1909 (pastel on paper), Sarah Purser (1848-1943) / Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, Ireland / Bridgeman Images.
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CONTENTS
CROSSWAYS (1889)
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 ROSE (1893)
To the Rose upon the Rood of Time
Fergus and the Druid
Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea
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
The Countess Cathleen in Paradise
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 Pensioner
The Ballad of Father Gilligan
The Two Trees
To Some I have Talked with by the Fire
To Ireland in the Coming Times
THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS (1899)
The Hosting of the Sidhe
The Everlasting Voices
The Moods
The Lover Tells of the Rose in his Heart
The Host of the Air
The Fish
The Unappeasable Host
Into the Twilight
The Song of Wandering Aengus
The Song of the Old Mother
The Heart of the Woman
The Lover Mourns the Loss of Love
He mourns the Change that has come upon Him and his Beloved, and longs for the End of the World
He Bids his Beloved be at Peace
He Reproves the Curlew
He remembers forgotten Beauty
A Poet to his Beloved
He gives his Beloved certain Rhymes
To his Heart, bidding it have no Fear
The Cap and Bells
The Valley of the Black Pig
The Lover asks Forgiveness because of his Many Moods
He tells of a Valley Full of Lovers
He tells of the Perfect Beauty
He Hears the Cry of the Sedge
He Thinks of Those who have Spoken Evil of his Beloved
The Blessed
The Secret Rose
Maid Quiet
The Travail of Passion
The Lover pleads with his Friend for Old Friends
The Lover speaks to the Hearers of his Songs in Coming Days
The Poet pleads with the Elemental Powers
He wishes his Beloved were Dead
He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
He thinks of his Past Greatness when a Part of the Constellations of Heaven
The Fiddler of Dooney
IN THE SEVEN WOODS (1904)
In The Seven Woods
The Arrow
The Folly of Being Comforted
Old Memory
Never give all the Heart
The Withering of the Boughs
Adam’s Curse
Red Hanrahan’s Song of Ireland
The Old Men admiring Themselves in the Water
Under the Moon
The Ragged Wood
O do not Love Too Long
The Players ask for a Blessing on the Psalteries and on Themselves
The Happy Townland
THE GREEN HELMET AND OTHER POEMS (1910)
His Dream
A Woman Homer Sung
Words
No Second Troy
Reconciliation
King and no King
Peace
Against Unworthy Praise
The Fascination of what’s Difficult
A Drinking Song
The Coming of Wisdom with Time
On hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature
To a Poet, who would have me Praise certain Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine
The Mask
Upon a House shaken by the Land Agitation
At the Abbey Theatre
These are the Clouds
At Galway Races
A Friend’s Illness
All Things Can Tempt Me
Brown Penny
RESPONSIBILITIES (1914)
Introductory Rhymes
The Grey Rock
To a Wealthy Man who promised a second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if it were proved the People wanted Pictures
September 1913
To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing
Paudeen
To A Shade
When Helen lived
On Those that Hated ‘The Playboy of the Western World,’ 1907
The Three Beggars
The Three Hermits
Beggar to Beggar Cried
Running to Paradise
The Hour before Dawn
A Song from The Player Queen
The Realists
I. The Witch
II. The Peacock
The Mountain Tomb
I. To a Child dancing in the Wind
II. Two Years Later
A Memory of Youth
Fallen Majesty
Friends
The Cold Heaven
That the Night come
An Appointment
The Magi
The Dolls
A Coat
Closing Rhyme
THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE (1919)
The Wild Swans at Coole
In Memory of Major Robert Gregory
An Irish Airman foresees his Death
Men improve with the Years
The Collar-Bone of a Hare
Under the Round Tower
Solomon to Sheba
The Living Beauty
A Song
To a Young Beauty
To a Young Girl
The Scholars
Tom O’Roughley
Shepherd and Goatherd
Lines Written in Dejection
The Dawn
On Woman
The Fisherman
The Hawk
Memory
Her Praise
The People
His Phoenix
A Thought from Propertius
Broken Dreams
A Deep-Sworn Vow
Presences
The Balloon of the Mind
To a Squirrel at Kyle-na-no
On Being Asked for a War Poem
In Memory of Alfred Pollexfen
Upon a Dying Lady
I. Her Courtesy
II. Certain Artists bring her Dolls and Drawings
III. She turns the Dolls’ Faces to the Wall
IV. The End of Day
V. Her Race
VI. Her Courage
VII. Her Friends bring her a Christmas Tree
Ego Dominus Tuus
A Prayer on Going into my House
The Phases of the Moon
The Cat and the Moon
The Saint and the Hunchback
Two Songs of a Fool
Another Song of a Fool
The Double Vision of Michael Robartes
MICHAEL ROBARTES AND THE DANCER (1921)
Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Solomon and the Witch
An Image from a Past Life
Under Saturn
Easter, 1916
Sixteen Dead Men
The Rose Tree
On a Political Prisoner
The Leaders of the Crowd
Towards Break of Day
Demon and Beast
The Second Coming
A Prayer for my Daughter
A Meditation in Time of War
To be carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee
NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC
The Wanderings of Oisin (1889)
The Old Age of Queen Maeve (1903)
Baile and Aillinn (1903)
The Shadowy Waters (1906)
The Two Kings (1914)
BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD
LYRICAL
Crossways (1889)
‘The stars are threshed, and the souls are threshed from their husks.’
WILLIAM BLAKE
TO
A. E.
CROSSWAYS
The Song of the Happy Shepherd
The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her restless head:
But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.
Where are now the warring kings,
Word be-mockers?—By the Rood,
Where are now the warring kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said,
Reading some entangled story:
The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.
Then nowise worship dusty deeds,
Nor seek, for this is also sooth,
To hunger fiercely after truth,
Lest all thy toiling only breeds
New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth
Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then,
No learning from the starry men,
Who follow with the optic glass
The whirling ways of stars that pass—
Seek, then, for this is also sooth,
No word of theirs—the cold star-bane
Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain,
And dead is all their human truth.
Go gather by the humming sea
Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell.
And to its lips thy story tell,
And they thy comforters will be.
Rewording in melodious guile
Thy fretful words a little while,
Till they shall singing fade in ruth
And die a pearly brotherhood;
For words alone are certain good:
Sing, then, for this is also sooth.
I must be gone: there is a grave
Where daffodil and lily wave,
And I would please the hapless faun,
Buried under the sleepy ground,
With mirthful songs before the dawn.
His shouting days with mirth were crowned;
And still I dream he treads the lawn,
Walking ghostly in the dew,
Pierced by my glad singing through,
My songs of old earth’s dreamy youth:
But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou!
For fair are poppies on the brow:
Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
The Sad Shepherd
There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend,
And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,
Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming
And humming Sands, where windy surges wend:
And he called loudly to the stars to bend
From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they
Among themselves laugh on and sing alway:
And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story!
The sea Swept on and cried her old cry still,
Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill.
He fled the persecution of her glory
And, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping,
Cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening.
But naught they heard, for they are always listening,
The dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping.
And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Sought once again the shore, and found a shell,
And thought, I will my heavy story tell
Till my own words, re-echoing, shall send
Their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart;
And my own talc again for me shall sing,
And my own whispering words be comforting,
And lo! my ancient burden may depart.
Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim;
But the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone
Changed all he sang to inarticulate moan
Among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.
The Cloak, the Boat and the Shoes
‘What do you make so fair and bright?’
‘I make the cloak of Sorrow:
O lovely to see in all men’s sight
Shall be the cloak of Sorrow,
In all men’s sight.’
‘What do you build with sails for flight?’
‘I build a boat for Sorrow:
O swift on the seas all day and night
Saileth the rover Sorrow,
All day and night.’
What do you weave with wool so white?’
‘I weave the shoes of Sorrow:
Soundless shall be the footfall light
In all men’s ears of Sorrow,
Sudden and light.’
Anashuya and Vijaya
A little Indian temple in the Golden Age. Around it a garden; around that the forest. Anashuya, the young priestess, kneeling within the temple.
Anashuya. Send peace on all the lands and flickering corn.—
O, may tranquility walk by his elbow
When wandering in the forest, if he love
No other.—Hear, and may the indolent flocks
Be plentiful.—And if he love another,
May panthers end him.—Hear, and load our king
With wisdom hour by hour.—May we two stand,
When we are dead, beyond the setting suns,
A little from the other shades apart,
With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.
Vijaya. [entering and throwing a lily at her] Hail! hail, my Anashuya.
Anashuya. No: be still.
I, priestess of this temple, offer up
Prayers for the land.
Vijaya. I will wait here, Amrita.
Anashuya. By mighty Brahma’s ever-rustling robe,
Who is Amrita? Sorrow of all sorrows!
Another fills your mind.
Vijaya. My mother’s name.
Anashuya. [sings, coming out of the temple]
A sad, sad thought went by me slowly:
Sigh, O you little stars! O sigh and shake your blue apparel!
The sad, sad thought has gone from me now wholly:
Sing, O you little stars! O sing and raise your rapturous carol
To mighty Brahma, be who made you many as the sands,
And laid you on the gates of evening with his quiet hands.
[Sits down on the steps of the temple.]
Vijaya, I have brought my evening rice;
The sun has laid his chin on the grey wood,
Weary, with all his poppies gathered round him.
Vijaya. The hour when Kama, full of sleepy laughter,
Rises, and showers abroad his fragrant arrows,
Piercing the twilight with their murmuring barbs.
Anashuya. See-how the sacred old flamingoes come.
Painting with shadow all the marble steps:
Aged and wise, they seek their wonted perches
Within the temple, devious walking, made
To wander by their melancholy minds.
Yon tall one eyes my supper; chase him away,
Far, far away. I named him after you.
He is a famous fisher; hour by hour
He ruffles with his bill the minnowed streams.
Ah! there he snaps my rice. I told you so.
Now cuff him off. He’s off! A kiss for you,
Because you saved my rice. Have you no thanks?
Vijaya [sings]. Sing you of her, O first few stars,
Whom Brahma, touching with his finger, praises, for you hold
The van of wandering quiet; ere you be too calm and old,
Sing, turning in your cars,
Sing, till you raise your hands and sigh, and from your car-heads peer,
With all your whirling hair, and drop many an azure tear.
Anashuya. What know the pilots of the stars of tears?
Vijaya. Their faces are all worn, and in their eyes
Flashes the fire of sadness, for they see
The icicles that famish all the North,
Where men lie frozen in the glimmering snow;
And in the flaming forests cower the lion
And lioness, with all their whimpering cubs;
And, ever pacing on the verge of things,
The phantom, Beauty, in a mist of tears;
While we alone have round us woven woods,
And feel the softness of each other’s hand,
Amrita, while—
Anashuya. [going away from him]
Ah me! you love another,
[Bursting into tears.]
And may some sudden dreadful ill befall her!
Vijaya. I loved another; now I love no other.
Among the moldering of ancient woods
You live, and on the village border she,
With her old father the blind wood-cutter;
I saw her standing in her door but now.
Anashuya. Vijaya, swear to love her never more.
Vijaya. Ay, ay.
Anashuya. Swear by the parents of the gods,
Dread oath, who dwell on sacred Himalay,
On the far Golden peak; enormous shapes,
Who still were old when the great sea was young;
On their vast faces mystery and dreams;
Their hair along the mountains rolled and filled
From year to year by the unnumbered nests
Of aweless birds, and round their stirless feet
The joyous flocks of deer and antelope,
Who never hear the unforgiving hound.
Swear!
Vijaya. By the parents of the gods, I swear.
Anashuya. [sings] I have forgiven, O new star!
Maybe you have not heard of us, you have come forth so newly,
You hunter of the fields afar!
Ah, you will know my loved one by his hunter’s arrows truly,
Shoot on him shafts of quietness, that he may ever keep
A lonely laughter, and may kiss his hands to me in sleep.
Farewell, Vijaya. Nay, no word, no word;
I, priestess of this temple, offer up
Prayers for the land.
[Vijaya goes.]
O Brahma, guard in sleep
The merry lambs and the complacent kine,
The flies below the leaves, and the young mice
In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks
Of red flamingoes; and my love, Vijaya;
And may no restless fay with fidget finger
Trouble his sleeping: give him dreams of me.
The Indian upon God
I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.
I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:
Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain