The Collected Poetry of William Butler Yeats

by W.B. Yeats

Born and educated in Dublin, Ireland, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) discovered early in his literary career a fascination with Irish folklore and the occult. Later awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, Yeats produced a vast collection of stories, songs, and poetry of Ireland's historical and legendary past. This compilation includes a vast number of works, pieces that have earned Yeats the arguable rank of the greatest poet of his time. The Collected Poetry of William Butler Yeats includes the following collections: "Lyrical,"" The Rose," "The Wind Among The Reeds," "In The Seven Woods," "The Green Helmet and Other Poems," "Responsibilities," "The Wild Swans at Coole," "Michael Robartes and the Dancer," and several other poems.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Irish Literature

200 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2010

About the author

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Sebastian Porta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sailing to Byzantium

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.


II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.


III

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.


IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the poetry of Yeats. It was nice to have a long dose of it all in one place rather than just getting one or two in my other poetry collection books.

[Thomas Kiernan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the oldest friend I have, this collection of the best of W. B. Y. This poet never dried up. His poetry just got better and better as he got older. His early romantic poems with their nineteenth century form and themes on nature and emotion just developed and developed like an old oak in its three stages of growth. Less introvert as he aged, Yeats saw his country fight for its freedom, the Terrible Beauty, that he writes about in Easter Nineteen Sixteen. He saw it partially attain freedom and endure a short but bitter civil war. With sadness he witnessed the dying off of the Great Houses of the Anglo Irish. The romantic notions of his younger years seemed to die in front of him as Ireland, partitioned, became a modern country and he could write of it: "That is no country for old men." He was a witness to history being made without being caught up in it or contaminated by it. Somehow, he managed to retain his artistic freedom and his intellectual independence with the resultant powerful and beautiful poetry of his latter years. Everyone who has even the slightest appreciation for poetry should read Yeats.

[Jesús Snz · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful.