I have always been more acquainted with unorthodox and “avant-garde” literature. Lately I have been going back and reading some of the more traditional classics. I must say, at first I wanted to pull my eyes out while reading Yeats. He definitely has an unhealthy obsession with swift and although Keats, who as a poet is good, I feel he draws too much in his early writings from the deficient pathos I find in his works. Therefore as a self proclaimed “neo-romantic” I struggled through his early writings. Nevertheless his later works were superb! The hyperbolic romantic idealization wanes towards what the editor rightly describes as his writing of the soul through the body. In this vein I feel he redeems his prior convictions and breaks free from stylistic constraints as tactile emotions comingle with his more spiritual convictions. One must concede to him though an unrelenting optimism through the times of strife, however disillusioned I may feel it to be, as he continued his career.
Joy“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”-Yeatshttp://www.online-literature.com/yeat...O Do Not Love Too LongSWEETHEART, do not love too long:I loved long and long,And grew to be out of fashionLike an old song.All through the years of our youthNeither could have knownTheir own thought from the other's,We were so much at one.But O, in a minute she changed -O do not love too long,Or you will grow out of fashionLike an old song. The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His HeartALL things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of goldFor my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
TimothyNo matter who you are or what your interests, I can find at least one poem here that will move you deeply.
XavierOne poem: Adam's Curse.
Laura-nassidesa EschbaughThere are good annotated remarks, and the excellent service resources to continue to reading Years.
Lindsi went through a irish literature phase in college. i read as much as possible however i feel like i have retained little from it.
Maureen McKennaThe Wilde Swans at Coole... my favorite
Josh Rojaschallenging.
bridgethe's the man
BruceM.L. Rosenthal has edited and written a most useful introduction to this 4th edition of William Butler Yeats – Selected Poems and Four Plays. What a delight it always is to return to Yeats after the blandness and mediocrity of much of today’s poetry. I suppose each age has its share of uninspired verse; we simply have the disadvantage of not yet having outlived ours. I greatly enjoyed rereading so many favorite poems in this edition, sometimes savoring entire works, more often sitting contentedly with a few familiar and ever-meaningful lines. Yeats’ poetry is music, music calling one back to reread it again and again.
J. Aleksandr WoottonI read this collection too fast, a couple poems a night just before going to sleep, and that's not the way to read Yeats. You need resources nearby for looking up his references (unless you have a really strong background in classical literature, Irish mythology, and the past century and a half or so of the history of Ireland) to fully appreciate many of the poems in this collection.Nevertheless, much of what you can understand and some of what you can't, you are stirred by and love.
Mia McInnisI sorely enjoyed this book, I love Yeats and having a chance to again re-read some of his works was a nice change of pace.
JeffThis elegant collection of the poet's work takes us from his early, idealistic times, to his final days and mortally aware literature. Yeats's poetry is hyper-representative of Ireland, oftentimes exhibiting anthropomorphic figures of the country in his tale-like sing-song rhyming structures and poetic plots. Interspersed throughout, though, are his heavy Irish revolutionary thoughts, his lover's laments (damn you, Maude Gonne), and his pensive final summation of life and art.There are some truly deep and beautiful poems in this collection, enough to make you read again and again. The four plays, included throughout, likewise mirror Yeats's fascination with Irish politics, literature and lore, and love.Perhaps Ireland's greatest poet (and THAT is a distinction), a collection of Yeats should be on every shelf.
Stephanie Mariea powerful glimpse into what was then the future of literature, with an added history lesson and analysis of the [still ongoing:] Irish-English political struggle.
MaryWeatherwellMany was the dreamy sigh I spent over this collection of poems and plays. Oh, darling William, keeper of my collegiate heart!
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