Questions tagged [william-butler-yeats]
Questions about the works of Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) or his life as a writer.
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Symbolism in the final lines of Yeats' Song of Wandering Aengus
Yeats' early poem The Song of Wandering Aengus is a poetic retelling of a famous Irish myth as I explored in this question. It's also a metaphor in which Aengus' quest for his fae lover is compared to ...
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What did Yeats in his late period think of his early work?
The poetry of W.B. Yeats is commonly seen as belonging to three rough phases. The first is a Romantic and pre-Raphaelite style of flowery verse which commonly invokes figures of Irish mythology. The ...
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The influence of Rossetti and Blake on Yeats
In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty makes this statement in passing:
"Merely philosophical" questions, like Eddington's question about the two tables, are attempts to stir ...
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How does “The Second Coming” form the background for “A Prayer for My Daughter”?
I was reading William Butler Yeats's “A Prayer for My Daughter”. The book which I was reading had a box named “Aid to Comprehend the poem” and in that box were written these lines:
The poem [A Prayer ...
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Comprehending “how but in custom and ceremony are innocence and beauty born”
“A Prayer for My Daughter” is a poem written by W.B. Yeats on the birth of his daughter. One of the themes of the poem is contrasting the future he desires for his daughter with the life of Maud Gonne,...
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Understanding and interpreting Yeats phases of the moon
I recently came across this lovely poem whilst watching the (excellent) TV show Rake
The song will have it
That those that we have loved got their long fingers
From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's ...
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What does "ceremony of innocence" mean In "The Second Coming"?
The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats:
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 ...
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Who is the falcon, and who the falconer?
In Yeats' greatest of poems, he writes that "the falcon cannot hear the falconer."
Who is the falcon and who is the falconer?
Why might Yeats have chosen this metaphor?
The Second Coming
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When did Yeats enter into "Virgil's territory"?
In the definition of "divagate," several dictionaries, like this one, give the following example sentence:
Yeats divagated into Virgil's territory only once.
What instance of Yeats' writing does ...
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What does "pull down the blinds" mean in Yeats's poem "The Mountain Tomb"?
Pour wine and dance, if manhood still have pride,
Bring roses, if the rose be yet in bloom;
The cataract smokes on the mountain side.
Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.
Pull down ...
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Why could Cú Chulainn not recognise his own son?
I was reading WB Yeats play On Baile's Strand in which the protagonist Cú Chulainn kills a young man whom he later recognizes as his son. How did he not recognize him earlier? Fintain, a character in ...
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What does "kettle at the heel" mean in this Yeats poem, "The Tower"?
What shall I do with this absurdity —
O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
...
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What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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 tide is loosed, and ...
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How much of The Song of Wandering Aengus by Yeats is based on Irish folklore?
Yeats was a keen student of Irish folklore and it is clear that the titular character in his poem The Song of Wandering Aengus is based on the pre-Christian Celtic god of love, youth and poetry.
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How does the golden bough in "Sailing to Byzantium" relate to the story in the Aeneid, if at all?
According to Wikipedia of W.B. Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium" is
a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Yeats explores his thoughts and musings on how immortality, art, and the human spirit may ...
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