Breathtaking in range, The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats includes all of the poems authorized by Yeats for inclusion and encompasses the entire arc of his career: reworkings of ancient Irish myths and legends, meditations on youth and old age, whimsical songs of love, and somber poems of life in a nation torn by war and uprising.
The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats includes all of the poems authorized by Yeats for inclusion in his standard canon. Breathtaking in range, it encompasses the entire arc of his career, from luminous reworkings of ancient Irish myths and legends to passionate meditations on the demands and rewards of youth and old age, from exquisite, occasionally whimsical songs of love, nature, and art to somber and angry poems of life in a nation torn by war and uprising. In observing the development of rich and recurring images and themes over the course of his body of work, we can trace the quest of this century's greatest poet to unite intellect and artistry in a single magnificent vision.
Revised and corrected, this edition includes Yeats's own notes on his poetry, complemented by explanatory notes from esteemed Yeats scholar Richard J. Finneran. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats is the most comprehensive edition of one of the world's most beloved poets available in paperback.
Table of Contents:
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
PREFACE
PART ONE
Lyrical
Crossways (1889)
1 The Song of the Happy Shepherd
2 The Sad Shepherd
3 The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes
4 Anashuya and Vijaya
5 The Indian upon God
6 The Indian to his Love
7 The Falling of the Leaves
8 Ephemera
9 The Madness of King Goll
10 The Stolen Child
11 To an Isle in the Water
12 Down by the Salley Gardens
13 The Meditation of the Old Fisherman
14 The Ballad of Father O'Hart
15 The Ballad of Moll Magee
16 The Ballad of the Foxhunter
The Rose (1893)
17 To the Rose upon the Rood of Time
18 Fergus and the Druid
19 Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea
20 The Rose of the World
21 The Rose of Peace
22 The Rose of Battle
23 A Faery Son
24 The Lake Isle of Innisfree
25 A Cradle Song
26 The Pity of Love
27 The Sorrow of Love
28 When You are Old
29 The White Birds
30 A Dream of Death
31 The Countess Cathleen in Paradise
32 Who goes with Fergus?
33 The Man who dreamed of Faeryland
34 The Dedication to a Book of Stories selected from the Irish Novelists
35 The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner
36 The Ballad of Father Gilligan
37 The Two Trees
38 To Some I have Talked with by the Fire
39 To Ireland in the Coming Times
The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
40 The Hosting of the Sidhe
41 The Everlasting Voices
42 The Moods
43 The Lover tells of the Rose in his Heart
44 The Host of the Air
45 The Fish
46 The Unappeasable Host
47 Into the Twilight
48 The Song of Wandering Aengus
49 The Song of the Old Mother
50 The Heart of the Woman
51 The Lover mourns for the Loss of Love
52 He mourns for the Change that has come upon Him and his Beloved, and longs for the End of the World
53 He bids his Beloved be at Peace
54 He reproves the Curlew
55 He remembers forgotten Beauty
56 A Poet to his Beloved
57 He gives his Beloved certain Rhymes
58 To his Heart, bidding it have no Fear
59 The Cap and Bells
60 The Valley of the Black Pig
61 The Lover asks Forgiveness because of his Many Moods
62 He tells of a Valley full of Lovers
63 He tells of the Perfect Beauty
64 He hears the Cry of the Sedge
65 He thinks of Those who have spoken Evil of his Beloved
66 The Blessed
67 The Secret Rose
68 Maid Quiet
69 The Travail of Passion
70 The Lover pleads with his Friend for Old Friends
71 The Lover speaks to the Hearers of his Songs in Coming Days
72 The Poet pleads with the Elemental Powers
73 He wishes his Beloved were Dead
74 He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
75 He thinks of his Past Greatness when a Part of the Constellations of Heaven
76 The Fiddler of Dooney
In the Seven Woods (1904)
77 In the Seven Woods
78 The Arrow
79 The Folly of being Comforted
80 Old Memory
81 Never give all the Heart
82 The Withering of the Boughs
83 Adam's Curse
84 Red Hanrahan's Song about Ireland
85 The Old Men admiring Themselves in the Water
86 Under the Moon
87 The Ragged Wood
88 O do not Love Too Long
89 The Players ask for a Blessing on the Psalteries and on Themselves
90 The Happy Townland
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
91 His Dream
92 A Woman Homer sung
93 Words
94 No Second Troy
95 Reconciliation
96 King and no King
97 Peace
98 Against Unworthy Praise
99 The Fascination of What's Difficult
100 A Drinking Song
101 The Coming of Wisdom with Time
102 On hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature
103 To a Poet, who would have me Praise certain Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine
104 The Mask
105 Upon a House shaken by the Land Agitation
106 At the Abbey Theatre
107 These are the Clouds
108 At Galway Races
109 A Friend's Illness
110 All Things can tempt Me
111 Brown Penny
Responsibilities (1914)
112 Introductory Rhymes
113 The Grey Rock
114 To a Wealthy Man who promised a second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if it were proved the People wanted Pictures
115 September 1913
116 To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing
117 Paudeen
118 To a Shade
119 When Helen lived
120 On Those that hated 'The Playboy of the Western World, ' 1907
121 The Three Beggars
122 The Three Hermits
123 Beggar to Beggar cried
124 Running to Paradise
125 The Hour before Dawn
126 A Song from 'The Player Queen'
127 The Realists
128 I. The Witch
129 II. The Peacock
130 The Mountain Tomb
131 I. To a Child dancing in the Wind
132 II. Two Years Later
133 A Memory of Youth
134 Fallen Majesty
135 Friends
136 The Cold Heaven
137 That the Night come
138 An Appointment
139 The Magi
140 The Dolls
141 A Coat
142 Closing Rhyme
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
par143 The Wild Swans at Coole
144 In Memory of Major Robert Gregory
145 An Irish Airman foresees his Death
146 Men improve with the Years
147 The Collar-bone of a Hare
148 Under the Round Tower
149 Solomon to Sheba
150 The Living Beauty
151 A Song
152 To a Young Beauty
153 To a Young Girl
154 The Scholars
155 Tom O'Roughley
156 Shepherd and Goatherd
157 Lines written in Dejection
158 The Dawn
159 On Woman
160 The Fisherman
161 The Hawk
162 Memory
163 Her Praise
164 The People
165 His Phoenix
166 A Thought from Propertius
167 Broken Dreams
168 A Deep-sworn Vow
169 Presences
170 The Balloon of the Mind
171 To a Squirrel at Kyle-na-no
172 On being asked for a War Poem
173 In Memory of Alfred Pollexfen Upon a Dying Lady:
174 I. Her Courtesy
175 II. Certain Artists bring her Dolls and Drawings
176 III. She turns the Dolls' Faces to the Wall
177 IV. The End of Day
178 V. Her Race
179 VI. Her Courage
180 VII. Her Friends bring her a Christmas Tree
181 Ego Dominus Tuus
182 A Prayer on going into my House
183 The Phases of the Moon
184 The Cat and the Moon
185 The Saint and the Hunchback
186 Two Songs of a Fool
187 Another Song of a Fool
188 The Double Vision of Michael Robartes
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)
189 Michael Robartes and the Dancer
190 Solomon and the Witch
191 An Image from a Past Life
192 Under Saturn
193 Easter, 1916
194 Sixteen Dead Men
195 The Rose Tree
196 On a Political Prisoner
197 The Leaders of the Crowd
198 Towards Break of Day
199 Demon and Beast
200 The Second Coming
201 A Prayer for my Daughter
202 A Meditation in Time of War
203 To be carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee
The Tower (1928)
204 Sailing to Byzantium
205 The Tower
Meditations in Time of Civil War:
206 I. Ancestral Houses
207 II. My House
208 III. My Table
209 IV. My Descendants
210 V. The Road at My Doo
211 VI. The Stare's Nest by My Window
212 VII. I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness
213 Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen
214 The Wheel
215 Youth and Age
216 The New Faces
217 A Prayer for my Son
218 Two Songs from a Play
219 Fragments
220 Leda and the Swan
221 On a Picture of a Black Centaur by Edmund Dulac
222 Among School Children
223 Colonus' Praise
par224 Wisdom
225 The Fool by the Roadside
226 Owen Aherne and his Dancers
A Man Young and Old:
227 I. First Love
228 II. Human Dignity
229 III. The Mermaid
230 IV. The Death of the Hare
231 V. The Empty Cup
232 VI. His Memories
233 VII. The Friends of his Youth
234 VIII. Summer and Spring
235 IX. The Secrets of the Old
236 X. His Wildness
237 XI. From 'Oedipus at Colonus'
238 The Three Monuments
239 All Souls' Night
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
240 In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz
241 Death
242 A Dialogue of Self and Soul
243 Blood and the Moon
244 Oil and Blood
245 Veronica's Napkin
246 Symbols
247 Spilt Milk
248 The Nineteenth Century and After
249 Statistics
250 Three Movements
251 The Seven Sages
252 The Crazed Moon
253 Coole Park, 1929
254 Coole and Ballylee, 1931
255 For Anne Gregory
256 Swift's Epitaph
257 At Algeciras - a Meditation upon Death
258 The Choice
259 Mohini Chatterjee
260 Byzantium
261 The Mother of God
262 Vacillation
263 Quarrel in Old Age
264 The Results of Thought
265 Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors
266 Remorse for Intemperate Speech
267 Stream and Sun at Glendalough
Words for Music Perhaps:
268 I. Crazy Jane and the Bishop
269 II. Crazy Jane Reproved
270 III. Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgment
271 IV. Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman
272 V. Crazy Jane on God
273 VI. Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
274 VII. Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks at the Dancers
275 VIII. Girl's Song
276 IX. Young Man's Song
277 X. Her Anxiety
278 XI. His Confidence
279 XII. Love's Loneliness
280 XIII. Her Dream
281 XIV. His Bargain
282 XV. Three Things
283 XVI. Lullaby
284 XVII. After Long Silence
285 XVIII. Mad as the Mist and Snow
286 XIX. Those Dancing Days are Gone
287 XX. 'I am of Ireland'
288 XXI. The Dancer at Cruachan and Cro-Patrick
289 XXII. Tom the Lunatic
290 XXIII. Tom at Cruachan
291 XXIV. Old Tom again
292 XXV. The Delphic Oracle upon Plotinus
A Woman Young and Old:
293 I. Father and Child
294 II. Before the World was Made
295 III. A First Confession
296 IV. Her Triumph
297 V. Consolation
298 VI. Chosen
299 VII. Parting
300 VIII. Her Vision in the Wood
301 IX. A Last Confession
302 X. Meeting
303 XI. From the 'Antigone'
[Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems (1935)]
304 Parnell's Funeral
305 Alternative Song for the Severed Head in 'The King of the Great Clock Tower'
306 Two Songs Rewritten for the Tune's Sake
307 A Prayer for Old Age
308 Church and State
Supernatural Songs:
309 I. Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn
310 II. Ribh denounces Patrick
311 III. Ribh in Ecstasy
312 IV. There
313 V. Ribh considers Christian Love insufficient
314 VI. He and She
315 VII. What Magic Drum?
316 VIII. Whence had they Come?
317 IX. The Four Ages of Man
318 X. Conjunctions
319 XI. A Needle's Eye
320 XII. Meru
New Poems (1938)
321 The Gyres
322 Lapis Lazuli
323 Imitated from the Japanese
324 Sweet Dancer
325 The Three Bushes
326 The Lady's First Song
327 The Lady's Second Song
328 The Lady's Third Song
329 The Lover's Song
330 The Chambermaid's First Song
331 The Chambermaid's Second Song
332 An Acre of Grass
333 What Then?
334 Beautiful Lofty Things
335 A Crazed Girl
336 To Dorothy Wellesley
337 The Curse of Cromwell
338 Roger Casement
339 The Ghost of Roger Casement
340 The O'Rahilly
341 Come Gather Round Me Parnellites
342 The Wild Old Wicked Man
343 The Great Day
344 Parnell
345 What Was Lost
346 The Spur
347 A Drunken Man's Praise of Sobriety
348 The Pilgrim
349 Colonel Martin
350 A Model for the Laureate
351 The Old Stone Cross
352 The Spirit Medium
353 Those Images
354 The Municipal Gallery Re-visited
355 Are You Content
[Last Poems (1938-1939)]
356 Under Ben Bulben
357 Three Songs to the One Burden
358 The Black Tower
359 Cuchulain Comforted
360 Three Marching Songs
361 In Tara's Halls
362 The Statues
363 News for the Delphic Oracle
364 Long-legged Fly
365 A Bronze Head
366 A Stick of Incense
367 Hound Voice
368 John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs. Mary Moore
369 High Talk
370 The Apparitions
371 A Nativity
372 Man and the Echo
373 The Circus Animals' Desertion
374 Politics
Narrative and Dramatic
375 The Wanderings of Oisin (1889)
376 The Old Age of Queen Maeve (1903)
377 Baile and Aillinn (1903)
The Shadowy Waters (1906):
378 Introductory Lines
379 The Harp of Aengus
380 The Shadowy Waters
381 The Two Kings (1914)
par382 The Gift of Harun Al-Rashid (1923)
Appendix A: Yeats's Notes in The Collected Poems (1933)
Notes to Appendix A
Appendix B: Music from New Poems (1938)
Notes to Appendix B
Explanatory Notes
Index to Titles
Index to First Lines
The late Richard J. Finneran was general editor, with George Mills Harper, of The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats for many years; series editor of The Poems in the Cornell Yeats; and editor of Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies, among other works. He held the Hodges Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; was a past president of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association; and served as executive director of the Society for Textual Scholarship.
William Butler Yeats is generally considered to be Ireland's greatest poet, living or dead, and one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.
Scribner Book Company
Pub Date: September 09, 1996
1.5" H x 8.3" L x 5.4" W
576 pages
paperback