Collected Poems

Complete and unabridged.

A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. William Butler Yeats is undoubtedly Ireland's greatest lyric poet. With his much-loved early poems such as "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", "The Stolen Child", and "He Remembers Forgotten Beauty" he defined the Celtic Twilight mood of the late-Victorian period, and lead the Irish Literary Renaissance. Yet his style evolved constantly, and he is acknowledged as a major figure in literary modernism and twentieth-century European letters. This volume contains all the major lyric poems reflecting the diverse moods and phases of this important and inspiring poet, from "The Cloths of Heaven" through to "Sailing to Byzantium".

As well as being one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939) is the greatest lyric poet that Ireland has ever produced. He was the acknowledged leader of the Irish Literary Renaissance, and he was awarded the "Nobel Prize for Literature" in 1923. His earl lyrical poetry includes "When You Are Old", "The Cloths of Heaven" and "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" but, unusually for a poet, Yeats’s later work surpasses the poems of his youth. T. S. Eliot described him as "one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them". This edition contains all the poems from the 1933 edition of "The Collected Poems", the last anthology to be published in the poet’s lifetime.

Introduction
Select Bibliography
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 ot Father O'Hart
• The Ballad of Moll Magee
• The Ballad of the Foxhunter

The Rose

• To the Rose upon the Rood of Time
• Fergus and the Druid
• Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea
• 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
• The Countess Cathleen in Paradise
• 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 Pensioner
• The Ballad of Father Gilligan
• The Two Trees
• To Some I have Talked with by the Fire
• To Ireland in the Coming Times

The Wind Among the Reeds

• The Hosting of the Sidhe
• The Everlasting Voices
• The Moods
• The Lover tells of the Rose in his Heart
• The Host of the Air
• The Fish
• The Unappeasable Host
• Into the Twilight
• The Song of Wandering Aengus
• The Song of the Old Mother
• The Heart of the Woman
• The Lover mourns for the Loss of Love
• He mourns for the Change that has come upon him and his Beloved, and longs for the End of the World
• He bids his Beloved be at Peace
• He reproves the Curlew
• He remembers Forgotten Beauty
• A Poet to his Beloved
• He gives his Beloved certain Rhymes
• To his Heart, bidding it have no Fear
• The Cap and Bells
• The Valley of the Black Pig
• The Lover asks Forgiveness because of his Many Moods
• He tells of a Valley full of Lovers
• He tells of the Perfect Beauty
• He hears the Cry of the Sedge
• He thinks of those who have Spoken Evil of his Beloved
• The Blessed
• The Secret Rose
• Maid Quiet
• The Travail of Passion
• The Lover pleads with his Friend for Old Friends
• The Lover speaks to the Hearers of his Songs in Coming Days
• The Poet pleads with the Elemental Powers
• He wishes his Beloved were Dead
• He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
• He thinks of his Past Greatness when a Part of the Constellations of Heaven
• The Fiddler of Dooney

In the Seven Woods

• In the Seven Woods
• The Arrow
• The Folly of Being Comforted
• Old Memory
• Never Give all the Heart
• The Withering of the Boughs
• Adam's Curse
• Red Hanrahan's Song about Ireland
• The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water
• Under the Moon
• The Ragged Wood
• O Do Not Love Too Long
• The Players ask for a Blessing on the Psalteries and on Themselves
• The Happy Townland

The Green Helmet and Other Poems

• His Dream
• A Woman Homer Sung
• Words
• No Second Troy
• Reconciliation
• King and No King
• Peace
• Against Unworthy Praise
• The Fascination of What's Difficult
• A Drinking Song
• The Coming of Wisdom with Time (On hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature)
• To a Poet, who would have me Praise certain
• Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine
• The Mask
• Upon a House shaken by the Land Agitation
• At the Abbey Theatre
• There are the Clouds
• At Galway Races
• A Friend's Illness
• All Things can Tempt me
• Brown Penny

Responsibilities

• The Grey Rock
• To a Wealthy Man who promised a Second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if it were proved the People wanted Pictures
• September 1913
• To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing
• Paudeen
• To a Shade
• When Helen Lived
• On those that hated
• 'The Playboy of the Western World', 1907
• The Three Beggars
• The Three Hermits
• Beggar to Beggar Cried
• Running to Paradise
• The Hour before Dawn
• A Song from 'The Player Queen'
• The Realists
• The Mountain Tomb
• A Memory of Youth
• Fallen Majesty
• Friends
• The Cold Heaven
• That the Night Come
• An Appointment
• The Magi
• The Dolls
• A Coat

The Wild Swans at Coole

• The Wild Swans at Coole
• In Memory of Major Robert Gregory
• An Irish Airman Foresees his Death
• Men Improve with the Years
• The Collar-Bone of a Hare
• Under the Round Tower
• Solomon to Sheba
• The Living Beauty
• A Song
• To a Young Beauty
• To a Young Girl
• The Scholars
• Tom O'Roughley
• Shepherd and Goatherd
• Lines Written in Dejection
• The Dawn
• On Woman
• The Fisherman
• The Hawk
• Memory
• Her Praise
• The People
• His Phoenix
• A Thought from Propertius
• Broken Dreams
• A Deep-sworn Vow
• Presences
• The Balloon of the Mind
• To a Squirrel at Kyle-na-no
• On being asked for a War Poem
• In Memory of Alfred Pollexfen
• Upon a Dying Lady
• Ego Dominus Tuus
• A Prayer on going into my House
• The Phases of the Moon
• The Cat and the Moon
• The Saint and the Hunchback
• Two Songs of a Fool
• Another Song of a Fool
• The Double Vision of Michael Robartes

Michael Robartes and the Dancer

• Michael Robartes and the Dancer
• Solomon and the Witch
• An Image from a Past Life
• Under Saturn
• Easter, 1916
• Sixteen Dead Men
• The Rose Tree
• On a Political Prisoner
• The Leaders of the Crowd
• Towards Break of Day
• Demon and Beast
• The Second Coming
• A Prayer for my Daughter
• A Meditation in Time of War
• To be Carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee

The Tower

• Sailing to Byzantium
• The Tower
• Meditations in Time of Civil War
• Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen
• The Wheel
• Youth and Age
• The New Faces
• A Prayer for my Son
• Two Songs from a Play
• Fragments
• Leda and the Swan
• On a Picture of a Black Centaur by Edmund Dulac
• Among School Children
• Colonus' Praise
• Widsom
• The Fool by the Roadside
• Owen Aherne and his Dancers
• A Man Young and Old
• The Three Monuments
• All Soul's Night

The Winding Stair and the Other Poems

• In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz
• Death
• A Dialogue of Self and Soul
• Blood and the Moon
• Oil and Blood
• Veronica's Napkin
• Symbols
• Spilt Milk
• The Nineteenth Century and After
• Statistic
• Three Movements
• The Seven Sages
• The Crazed Moon
• Coole Park, 1929
• Coole and Ballylee, 1931
• For Anne Gregory
• Swift's Epitaph
• At Algeciras - A Meditation upon Death
• The Choice
• Mohini Chatterjee
• Byzantium
• The Mother of God
• Vacillation
• Quarrel in Old Age
• The Results of Thought
• Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors
• Remorse for Intemperate Speech
• Stream and Sun at Glendalough
• Words for Music Perhaps
• A Woman Young and Old

From A Full Moon in March

• Parnell's Funeral
• Three Songs to the Same Tune
• Alternative Song for the Severed Head in 'The King of the Great Clock Tower'
• Two Songs rewritten for the Tune's Sake
• Church and State
• Supernatural Songs

Last Poems

• The Gyres
• Lapis Lazuli
• Imitated from the Japanese
• Sweet Dancer
• The Three Bushes
• The Lady's First Song
• The Lady's Second Song
• The Lady's Third Song
• The Lover's Song
• The Chambermaid's First Song
• The Chambermaid's Second Song
• An Acre of Grass
• What Then?
• Beautiful Lofty Things
• A Crazed Girl
• To Dorothy Wellesley
• The Curse of Cromwell
• Roger Casement
• The Ghost of Roger Casement
• The O'Rahilly
• Come Gather round Me, Parnellites
• The Wild Old Wicked Man
• The Great Day
• Parnell
• What was Lost
• The Spur
• A Drunken Man's Praise of Sobriety
• The Pilgrim
• Colonel Martin
• A Model for the Laureate
• The Old Stone Cross
• The Spirit Medium
• Those Images
• The Municipal Gallery Revisited
• Are You Content?
• Three Songs to the One Burden
• In Tara's Halls
• The Statues
• News for the Delphic Oracle
• Three Marching Songs
• Long-legged Fly
• A Bronze Head
• A Stick of Incense
• John Kinsellla's Lament for Mrs Mary Moore
• Hound Voice
• High Talk
• The Apparitions
• A Nativity
• Why should not Old Men be Mad?
• The Satesman's Holiday
• Crazy Jane on the Mountain
• The Circus Animal's Desertion
• Politics
• The Man and the Echo
• Cuchulain Comforted
• The Black Tower
• Under Ben Bulben

Index of Poem Titles
Index of First Lines