William Butler Yeats - Poems by the Famous Poet - All Poetry

Famous poet /

William Butler Yeats

?-1939  •  Ranked #6 in the top 500 poets

William Butler Yeats [1865-1939] is one of Irelands most revered poets and playwrights. His work has been widely circulated and anthologised. As poetry and as song a number of his poems have been recorded and also used on radio, TV and films.

W.B.Yeats was born in Dublin Ireland on 13th June 1865, but moved to Chiswick London in 1867 due to his fathers career as a lawyer and did not return to Ireland until 1881, where he studied at the Metropolitan School of Art, it was here that he met fellow poet George Russell who shared his interest in mysticism. In 1885 Yeats had his first poems published in the Dublin University Review, in 1887 he returned with his family to Chiswick, and 1890 see him along with Ernest Rhys form the Rhymers club, a group of poets who met in Fleet street, London between 1891-1894, the line up at the start included the likes of Richard Le Gallienne, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, Arthur Symmons, John Davidson, T.W.Rolleston, Selwyn Image and Edwin Ellis. In Yeats's memoirs, Four Years:1887-1891, Yeats claimed William Watson joined but never came, Frances Thompson came once but did not join, and Oscar Wilde would only attend meetings in private houses.



In 1889 he met his great love, Maud Gonne (1866-1953), who became the subject of his early love poetry, but she was to marry Major John MacBride in 1903, which was the inspiration of his poem, No Second Troy.

In 1897 he formed a friendship with Lady Gregory and her estate, Coole Park, became the setting for several of his poems. At the beginning of 1917, he purchased the Norman stone tower, (Thoor Ballylee) near Coole Park and restored the derelict building into a summer home and a central symbol in some of his later poetry. October in the same year see his marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees.



The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to him in 1923. And through out his life he wrote many poems, plays , shortstories and articles which covered many aspects from folklore to politics including the controversial Oxford Book of Modern Verse, (1936).



W.B.Yeats died at the Hotel Ideal Sejour in 1939 and was buried in Menton, France but his coffin was later moved to Drumcliff in Sligo, Ireland in 1948, and now there is some doubt to the authenticity of the bones.
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The Second Coming

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight:  somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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92  

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
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Analysis (ai): The poem delving, but A theme and drift Apart from being

I want to be not very little to the
devoid
Of the
(in speaking
Nor is me 
it the not long meters to mind
it
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61  

Down By The Salley Gardens

DOWN by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white
feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not
agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white
hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
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Analysis (ai): Down By The Salley Gardens contrasts with the author's later works. In this work, he reflects on a youthful love, conveying a sense of loss and regret. The language is simple and direct, lacking the complexity and symbolism found in his later works. The poem belongs to the Romantic era, with its emphasis on nature and idealized love. It is similar to other works of the time in its exploration of themes related to love, nature, and the passage of time.
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19  
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