The First Yeats: Poems by W. B. Yeats, 1889-1899

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) began writing poetry as a devotee of Blake, Shelley, the pre-Raphaelites, and of nineteenth-century Irish poets including James Clarence Mangan and Samuel Ferguson. By the end of his life, he had, as T.S. Eliot said, created a poetic language for the twentieth century. The First Yeats deepens our understanding of the making of that poetic imagination, reprinting the original texts of Yeats's three early collections, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1899), The Countess of Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (1892), and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). The poems were subsequently heavily revised or discarded. Among them are some of the best-loved poems in English – 'The LakeIsle of Innisfree', 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' – fresh and unfamiliar here in their original contexts, together with Yeats's lengthy notes which were drastically cut in the collected editions. This illuminating edition by Edward Larrissy, editor of W.B. Yeats, The Major Works (Oxford University Press, 2000), includes an introduction that clarifies the literary, historical and intellectual context of the poems, detailed notes, and a bibliography. It offers essential material for reading –and revaluing – one of the great modern poets. Cover image: Front cover of The Wind Among the Reeds (4th edn, Elkin Matthews 1903) by Althea Gyles(detail). Copyright © The British Library Board 2010. All rights reserved. Cover design StephenRaw.com

Table of Contents:
Contents Introductionix A Note on the Text xviii Bibliographyxx THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN AND OTHER POEMS (1889) The Wanderings of Oisin Time and the Witch Vivien The Stolen Child Girl’s Song Ephemera An Indian Song Kanva, the Indian, on God Kanva on Himself Jealousy Song of the Last Arcadian King Goll The Meditation of the Old Fisherman The Ballad of Moll Magee The Phantom Ship A Lover’s Quarrel among the Fairies Mosada How Ferencz Renyi Kept Silent The Fairy Doctor Falling of the Leaves Miserrimus The Priest and the Fairy The Fairy Pedant She who Dwelt among the Sycamores On Mr Nettleship’s Picture at the Royal Hibernian Academy A Legend An Old Song Re-sung Street Dancers To an Isle in the Water Quatrains and Aphorisms The Seeker Island of Statues LEGENDS AND LYRICS (1892) To the Rose upon the Rood of Time Fergus and the Druid The Rose of the World The Peace of the Rose The Death of Cuchullin The White Birds Father Gilligan Father O’Hart When You Are Old The Sorrow of Love The Ballad of the Old Foxhunter A Fairy Song The Pity of Love The Lake Isle of Innisfree A Cradle Song (‘The angels are bending’) The Man who Dreamed of Fairyland Dedication of ‘Irish Tales’ The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner When You Are Sad The Two Trees They Went Forth to the Battle, But They Always Fell An Epitaph Apologia Addressed to Ireland in the Coming Days Yeats’s Notes THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS (1899) The Hosting of the Sidhe The Everlasting Voices The Moods Aedh Tells of the Rose in his Heart The Host of the Air Breasal the Fisherman A Cradle Song (‘The Danann children laugh...’) Into the Twilight The Song of Wandering Aengus The Song of the old Mother The Fiddler of Dooney The Heart of the Woman Aedh Laments the Loss of Love Mongan Laments the Change that has Come upon him and his Beloved Michael Robartes Bids his Beloved Be at Peace Hanrahan Reproves the Curlew Michael Robartes Remembers Forgotten Beauty A Poet to his Beloved Aedh Gives his Beloved Certain Rhymes To My Heart, Bidding it Have No Fear The Cap and Bells The Valley of the Black Pig Michael Robartes Asks Forgiveness Because of his Many Moods Aedh Tells of a Valley Full of Lovers Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty Aedh Hears the Cry of the Sedge Aedh Thinks of Those who have Spoken Evil of his Beloved The Blessed The Secret Rose Hanrahan Laments because of his Wanderings The Travail of Passion The Poet Pleads with his Friend for old Friends Hanrahan Speaks to the Lovers of his Songs in Coming Days Aedh Pleads with the Elemental Powers Aedh Wishes his Beloved were Dead Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven Mongan Thinks of his Past Greatness Yeats’s Notes Notes on the Poems Index of Titles Index of First Lines

About the Author :
William Butler Yeats was born was born in 1865 to John Butler Yeats, an artist, and Susan Pollexfen. His family belonged to the Church of Ireland. He spent his childhood in London, Dublin and Sligo. He trained as an artist, enrolling at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in 1884. His lifelong interest in esoteric traditions found early expression in his membership of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn from 1890. Yeats espoused the cause of Irish national liberation, and he was the most significant figure in the Irish literary and dramatic revival, being founder-president of the Irish National Dramatic Society (1902), which was the basis for the Abbey Theatre (1904). In 1895 he achieved poetic recognition with Poems. His early poetry followed Romantic and Victorian models, but in the early years of the twentieth century he developed a clearer and more direct style. His later poems are counted among the major achievements of modern poetry in English. After the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, he became a senator. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Yeats died in France in 1939. Edward Larrissy studied English at Oxford, where he read for a D.Phil on the poetry of William Blake. He has taught at the universities of Warwick and Keele, and has been Professor of English Literature and Head of School at the University of Leeds, where he won funding for a major project on Leeds Poetry. As Professor of Poetry at Queen's, Belfast, he plays an active role in the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, to which he is affiliated. He has published widely on poetry, including on the work of Yeats, and writes poetry himself. He has given invited papers among other places in Oxford, Cambridge, London, Strasbourg, Kyoto, South Carolina, and at the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo. His published works include: Yeats the Poet: The Measures of Difference (Harvester, 1994) and Larrissy was the editor of W.B. Yeats, The Major Works (Oxford Univserity Press, 2000).

Review :
'The excellent introduction by Edward Larrisy helps us to bridge the gap between the young man and the older... It is a fascinating exercise in literary archaeology.' - Michael Glover, The Tablet, 17 July 2010