Seven Poems and a Fragment

by W.B. Yeats

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Poetry

31 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 9, 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

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection by Yeats does exactly what it says on the tin. The fragment in question is a new ending to his play The King’s Threshold so you’ll probably want to be familiar with the original before reading this. Good stuff.

A Prayer For My Son

Bid a strong ghost stand at the head
That my Michael may sleep sound,
Nor cry, not turn in the bed
Till his morning meal come round;
And may departing twilight keep
All dread afar till morning’s back
That his mother may not lack
Her fill of sleep.

Bid the ghost have sword in hand:
There are malicious things, although
Few dream that they exist,
Who have planned his murder, for they know
Of some most haughty deed or thought
That waits upon his future days,
And would through hatred of the bays
Being that to nought.

Though You can fashion everything
From nothing every day, and teach
The morning stars to sing,
You have lacked articulate speech
To tell Your simplest want, and known,
Wailing upon a woman’s knee,
All of that worst ignominy
Of flesh and bone;

And when through all the town there ran
The servants of Your enemy
A woman and a man,
Unless the Holy Writings lie,
Have borne You through the smooth and rough
And through the fertile and waste,
Protecting till the danger past
With human love.

My next book: Meet the Drunks

[Iulia_R · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5⭐️

[Claire Elyse]

This style of poetry is not for me.

[Johanna Haas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book of poems to read on Halloween, or any good dark and stormy night.