CONTENTS
Preface
To the Third Edition
The Countess Cathleen
The Rose
To the Rose upon the Rood of Time
Fergus and the Druid
The Death of Cuchulain
The Rose of the World
The Rose of Peace
The Rose of Battle
A Faery Song
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
A Cradle Song
The Pity of Love
The Sorrow of Love
When You are Old
The White Birds
A Dream of Death
A Dream of a Blessed Spirit
Who goes with Fergus
The Man who Dreamed of Faeryland
The Dedication to a Book of Stories selected from the Irish Novelists
The Lamentation of the Old Pensionerxiv
The Ballad of Father Gilligan
The Two Trees
To Ireland in the Coming Times
The Land of Heart's Desire
Crossways
The Song of the Happy Shepherd
The Sad Shepherd
The Cloak, The Boat, and the Shoes
Anashuya and Vijaya
The Indian upon God
The Indian to his Love
The Falling of the Leaves
Ephemera
The Madness of King Goll
The Stolen Child
To an Isle in the Water
Down by the Salley Gardens
The Meditation of the Old Fisherman
The Ballad of Father O'Hart
The Ballad of Moll Magee
The Ballad of the Foxhunter
The Wanderings of Usheen
Glossary and Notes
About the Author
William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 - 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, and later served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.
A Protestant of Anglo-Irish descent, Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland. His father practised law and was a successful portrait painter. He was educated in Dublin and London and spent his childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. While in London he became part of the Irish literary revival. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats, William Wordsworth, William Blake and many more. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, lasting roughly from his student days at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced, modernist and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
From 1900 his poetry grew more physical, realistic and politicised. He moved away from the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with some elements including cyclical theories of life. He had become the chief playwright for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1897, and early on promoted younger poets such as Ezra Pound. His major works include The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), Deirdre (1907), The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), The Tower (1928) and Last Poems and Plays (1940). ...(wikipedia.org)
