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The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats #1), W.B. Yeats, Richard J. Finneran (Editor)To a child dancing in the windDance there upon the shore;What need have you to careFor wind or water's roar?And tumble out your hairThat the salt drops have wet;Being young you have not knownThe fool's triumph, nor yetLove lost as soon as wonNor the best labourer deadAnd all the sheaves to bindWhat need have you to dreadThe monstrous crying of the wind?تاریخ نخستین خوانش: بیست و نهم
Just looking at my bookcase and brushing off some old books covered in dust. Man how did I miss Yeats? Literary genius. 👍🐯
The poetry was very good but rather depressing. I believe he could have used some happy pills. I would recommend it to all however.Enjoy and Be Blessed.
If not for The Wanderings of Oisin, this was a 2.5/5. I think half of Yeats's poems include the word "dew." It's used so many times it actually increasingly pissed me off with each successive occurrence and almost culminated in my throwing the book across the room.Joyce was entirely right in his criticism of Yeats.Save for a few good poems, the rest are entirely forgettable.
I tend to feel that Yeats gets a lot of well-warranted praise for the lyrical heights of his best work, but being fully honest in a setting where they're all grouped together, it's harder to distinguish the greater poems from the simply appreciable ones. But the best stuff makes me want to stop writing poetry altogether because it's so good, so what do I know haha.
"For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately." This quote from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One's Own comes to my mind when I sit down to have a closer look at one of my favourite poets. For it wasn’t Yeats I was searching for when I went through my shelves today. It was Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe’s classic novel. Seeing Yeats in the shelf, however, I remembered that the title is from his famous poem “The Second Coming”, and I opened the earmarked poetry c...
Okay. Cards on the table.I'm not actually that into Yeats. I mean, he's fine, don't get me wrong. Kind of an interesting dude with his Cabalism and his Jacob Black-esque mother-to-daughter romantic transference thing.And some of his poetry I can't deny is pretty impressive stuff: the one about wishing for the cloths of the heaven, and the second coming, and the lake isle of innisfree. All that silver apples of the moon stuff. Very nice.But, honestly, I used to keep this on my bedside table in or...
In the fall of my last year in high school, I read extensively from this book in order to prepare my fall term paper. I chose Yeats because the Clancy Brothers occasionally included readings of poems by Yeats on their records and in their concerts. Given that the Clancy Brothers were very close Bob Dylan they constituted for me an important authority.Looking back I realized now what an anomaly Yeats was. He was a master of cadence, sound and rhyme skills that are no longer valued by English poet...
Not everything in here works for me, but Yeats is never less than a pleasure to read. As others have remarked upon, he's what one might describe as a proper poet: his rhythmic structure and rhymes flow off of the reading tongue—and at his best, he cannot be touched for the ariose beauty of his lyrical genius. Before the World Was MadeIf I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed: I'm looking
Yeats, Yeats, what can you say?Ireland. Mysticism. Longing. Despair. PO-etry!This is a surprisingly consistent, formidable, subtle and wide ranging oeuvre and I'm not the only person to have overheard the suggestion that Yeats was the greatest poet of the 20th Century. Lets not forget the influence. Not only in Ireland but in elsewhere, as part of some variation on the human cultural inheritance. As far as I can tell, there were at least three major (to my mind, anyway) poets who admitted that w...
The woods of Arcady are dead,And over is their antique joy;Of old the world on dreaming fed;Grey Truth is now her painted toy;Yet still she turns her restless head:Everything he writes is beauty personified, from his love poems to his Irish mythology. We sat grown quiet at the name of love; We saw the last embers of daylight die, And in the trembling blue-green of the sky A moon, worn as if it had been a shell Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell About the stars and broke in days and ye...
This was an extensive collection of Yeats’ poems. Some were magnificent, some easy to read, others difficult and obscure. Great for Kindle since I could hover over proper nouns and strange words to learn more. Complex just like the Irish poet himself.
I don’t typically go for poetry, but I’m working on a project where a cursory understanding of Irish literature is helpful. I enjoyed this collection, although I must admit that much of it was beyond me at some level. This collection includes a variety of Yeats’ styles – lyrical, narrative, and dramatic. It also spans from 1889 to 1939. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild. With a faery, hand in hand, more full of weeping than you can understand. At first, I simply read the poe...
Still my favourite poet of all time! Read this one cover to cover, spent heaps of time leisurely sifting through these evocative, elliptic lines of eternity. Gyres, skies, stars & wisdom ensues. The meaning, like a carefully crafted lake of silent water, tilted ever so slightly that the form is just out of your mind's reach. If these mysterious words draw you in & make you curious, perhaps this poetry collection is for you. If they repel you, perhaps Wordsworth is your kind of poet. It takes at
Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half-light;I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.Insane.Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed
Every night before falling asleep, I have been reading this wonderful compilation of Yeats' poems. In part, this has been an effort to distract myself from endlessly scrolling through dismal news sites and the cacophony of social media: to give my tired mind another focus. But I found these poems were not just a distraction, but also a joy. This is definitely a collection that I will return to again; there is always something new to discover in Yeats' poems.Yeats was incredibly prolific and this...
I have given hourlong recitations of Yeats's poems, among the easiest to recall in English; for example, his tetrameters in the late "Under Ben Bulben" which contains his epitaph. I defy you to say this aloud three times without knowing most of it by heart: "Whether man dies in his bed,/ Or the rifle knocks him dead,/ A brief parting from those dear/ Is the worst man has to fear." And his own epitaph is memorable, "Cast a cold eye/ On life, on death/ Horseman, pass by!" It is anti-conventional,
My favourite piece of Yeats, which I've known since I was a teenager. I've never really figured out what it means, but I think it's wonderful all the same:Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing. Beauty grown sad with its eternity Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea. Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait, For God has bid them share an equa...
PrefaceIntroduction Lyrical Crossways (1889)--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 FoxhunterThe Rose (1893)--To the Rose upon the Rood of T...
Aaah W.B, you were my first love! The first poet that ever made me cry real tears purely from the beauty of words. I travelled from the other side of the world to visit your grave and leave you flowers as thanks. It is very hard to pick a favourite poem but if pressed on the subject I guess it would be:He Wishes for the Cloths of HeavenHad I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with the golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and half-light, I w...