The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose

Throughout his long life, William Butler Yeats -- Irish writer and premier lyric poet in English in this century -- produced important works in every literary genre, works of astonishing range, energy, erudition, beauty, and skill. His early poetry is memorable and moving. His poems and plays of middle age address the human condition with language that has entered our vocabulary for cataclysmic personal and world events. The writings of his final years offer wisdom, courage, humor, and sheer technical virtuosity. T. S. Eliot pronounced Yeats "the greatest poet of our time -- certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language" and "one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them." The Yeats Reader is the most comprehensive single volume to display the full range of Yeats's talents. It presents more than one hundred and fifty of his best-known poems -- more than any other compendium -- plus eight plays, a sampling of his prose tales, and excerpts from his published autobiographical and critical writings. In addition, an appendix offers six early texts of poems that Yeats later revised. Also included are selections from the memoirs left unpublished at his death and complete introductions written for a projected collection that never came to fruition. These are supplemented by unobtrusive annotation and a chronology of the life. Yeats was a protean writer and thinker, and few writers so thoroughly reward a reader's efforts to essay the whole of their canon. This volume is an excellent place to begin that enterprise, to renew an old acquaintance with one of world literature's great voices, or to continue a lifelong interest in the phenomenon of literary genius.

Table of Contents:
Contents Preface Chronology Poems From Crossways (1889) The Song of the Happy Shepherd The Sad Shepherd The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes The Indian to his Love The Falling of the Leaves Ephemera The Stolen Child To an Isle in the Water Down by the Salley Gardens The Meditation of the Old Fisherman From The Rose (1893) To the Rose upon the Rood of Time Fergus and the Druid The Rose of the World The Lake Isle of Innisfree The Pity of Love The Sorrow of Love When You are Old The White Birds 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 Two Trees To Ireland in the Coming Times From The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) The Hosting of the Sidhe The Lover tells of the Rose in his Heart The Fish The Song of Wandering Aengus The Lover mourns for the Loss of Love 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 He hears the Cry of the Sedge He thinks of Those who have spoken Evil of his Beloved The Lover pleads with his Friend for Old Friends He wishes his Beloved were Dead He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven From In the Seven Woods (1903) In the Seven Woods The Arrow The Folly of being Comforted Never give all the Heart Adam's Curse Red Hanrahan's Song about Ireland The Old Men admiring Themselves in the Water O do not Love Too Long From The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) His Dream A Woman Homer sung parWords No Second Troy Reconciliation 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 All things can tempt me Brown Penny From Responsibilities (1914) [Introductory Rhymes] To a Wealthy Man who promised a second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if it were proved the People wanted Pictures September To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing Paudeen When Helen lived On Those that hated 'The Playboy of the Western World,' The Three Beggars Beggar to Beggar cried The Witch The Peacock To a Child dancing in the Wind Two Years Later A Memory of Youth Fallen Majesty Friends The Cold Heaven That the Night come The Magi The Dolls A Coat [Closing Rhyme] From The Wild Swans at Coole (1917) The Wild Swans at Coole In Memory of Major Robert Gregory An Irish Airman foresees his Death Men improve with the Years The Living Beauty A Song The Scholars Lines written in Dejection On Woman The Fisherman Memory The People Broken Dreams A Deep-sworn Vow The Balloon of the Mind On being asked for a War Poem Ego Dominus Tuus The Double Vision of Michael Robartes From Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) Michael Robartes and the Dancer Easter, 1916 Sixteen Dead Men The Rose Tree On a Political Prisoner The Second Coming A Prayer for my Daughter To be carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee dFrom The Tower (1928) Sailing to Byzantium The Tower Meditations in Time of Civil War Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen A Prayer for my Son Fragments Leda and the Swan Among School Children From 'Oedipus at Colonus' All Souls' Night From The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz A Dialogue of Self and Soul Coole Park, Coole and Ballylee, The Choice Mohini Chatterjee Byzantium Vacillation Crazy Jane and the Bishop Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop Her Anxiety Lullaby After Long Silence Father and Child Parting Her Vision in the Wood A Last Confession From the 'Antigone' From Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems (1935) Parnell's Funeral A Prayer for Old Age Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn The Four Ages of Man Meru From New Poems (1938) The Gyres Lapis Lazuli Imitated from the Japanese An Acre of Grass What Then? Beautiful Lofty Things Come Gather Round Me Parnellites The Great Day Parnell The Spur The Municipal Gallery Re-visited Are You Content From [Last Poems, 1938-39] Under Ben Bulben The Black Tower Cuchulain Comforted The Statues Long-legged Fly High Talk Man and the Echo The Circus Animals' Desertion Politics Plays [Dates and order follow The Plays (2001)] Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902) On Baile's Strand (1904) Deirdre (1907) At the Hawk's Well (1917) The Words upon the Window-pane (1930) The Resurrection (1931) Purgatory (1938) The Death of Cuchulain (1939) Autobiographical Writings From Reveries Over Childhood and Youth (1916) From The Trembling of the Veil (1922) From Book I: Four Years, 1887-1891 From Book II: Ireland After Parnell From Book III: Hodos Chameliontos From Book IV: The Tragic Generation From Book V: The Stirring of the Bones From Dramatis Personae (1935) From The Bounty of Sweden (1925) From Memoirs (Written 1916-17, Published 1972) From Journal (Written 1909-30, Published 1972) From Pages from a Diary Written in Nineteen Hundred and Thirty (1944) Critical Writings From Ideas of Good and Evil (1903) What is 'Popular Poetry'? From Magic William Blake and the Imagination The Symbolism of Poetry Ireland and the Arts From Samhain (1903) The Reform of the Theatre From Samhain (1908) First Principles From The Cutting of an Agate (1912) The Tragic Theatre From Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918) From Anima Hominis From Anima Mundi From A Vision (1925, 1937) From Introduction From Book I: The Great Wheel From Part I: The Principal Symbol From Part II: Examination of the Wheel From Part III: The Twenty-eight Incarnations From Book V: Dove or Swan Essays for the Scribner Edition (1937) Introduction Introduction to Essays Introduction to Plays From On the Boiler (1939) From Preliminaries Prose Fiction From The Celtic Twilight (1893, 1902) 'Dust Hath Closed Helen's Eye' Regina, Regina Pigmeorum, Veni The Adoration of the Magi (1897) From Stories of Red Hanrahan (1905) Red Hanrahan The Death of Hanrahan Appendix First Published Texts of Six Poems Notes A Note on the Notes A Note on the Text Notes to the Poems Notes to the Plays Notes to Autobiographical Writings Notes to Critical Writings Notes to Prose Fiction

About the Author :
The late Richard J. Finneran was general editor, with George Mills Harper, of The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats for many years; series editor of The Poems in the Cornell Yeats; and editor of Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies, among other works. He held the Hodges Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; was a past president of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association; and served as executive director of the Society for Textual Scholarship. William Butler Yeats is generally considered to be Ireland’s greatest poet, living or dead, and one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.