Pulkit's Reviews > The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

holy fuck, I love this collection so much, i finally got around finishing the lyricals, I'm so glad I explored his works.

my entire poetic
my favourite dialogues are from his translations; you can actually see his vocabulary being derived from the works he adores, in The Rose, you can actually see in poems like a faery song, I could immediately pick out the Keatings and the David Thoreau inspiration. [see more : a dream of death The ballad of father Gilligan by douglas lee saum
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LYRICALS

--crossways - 1889--

- many good translations like anashuya and vijaya and the Indian upon god, its really sad knowing many people prefer the William Blake translation of Asian works, that's peak cultural elitism but later translators like Yeats actually keep the same level of [??comprehensibility??] .
the later works in this book are Irish translations which are fine, i don't really get Irish mythology but the themes are really good.
in popular discourse, his earlier Irish works are often slandered but idek. my fav is the ballad of the foxhunter
3.5/5

--The Rose - 1993 --

- mainly romantic and [hopeful?] poems. i really love a faery song, a rose of peace, a dream of death, the two trees, the lake isle of Innisfree
~3.9/5?

-- the wind among the reeds - 1899 --
into the twilight is so brilliant. the winds among the reeds isn't well received by the mass but it has some really great pieces.
some really mature themes in poems like the remembers the forgotten beauty and maid quiet.
I had a beautiful friend
And dreamed that the old despair
Would end in love in the end:
She looked in my heart one day
And saw your image was there;
She has gone weeping away.
- the lover mourns for the loss of love - wb yeats.

--in the seven woods - 1904--
s underrated, actually. im in love with the withering of the boughs. it is my all time fav piece of poetry. it talks about the false sense of security that one gets from wisdom and the elitism is actually a kind of oppression on the educated which does not let them see the world for what it is. i have not seen the intended explanation and neither the online and academic discourse about it. this my personal interpretation. i have no idea what im talking about.

I cried when the moon was mutmuring to the birds:
'Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,
I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,
For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind.'
The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,
And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams.
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my, dreams.

I know of the leafy paths that the witches take
Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool,
And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake;
I know where a dim moon drifts, where the Danaan kind
Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool
On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams.
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round
Coupled with golden chains, and sing as they fly.
A king and a queen are wandering there, and the sound
Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind
With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by;
I know, and the curlew and peewit on Echtge of streams.
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

"No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams."

-do not love too long is such a sweet poem i love it so much.
you can actually see that 1904 and 1903 were good years for Yeats, he also gave his lectures in america.
see : halfway to the stars - WB Yeats in California, 1904 - William J. Feeney
themes of pre world war one American ideologies are present throughout this composition.

-- green helmet and other poems - 1910 -- & -- responsibilities - 1914 --
--(and partially the wild swans at coole - 1919)--

-wartime poetry, mostly describing wartime efforts and environments and it's effects. deals with themes of desolation and mistrust
poems like the coat king and no king deal with the loss of trust and security. his earlier compositions which have extreme - like themes of love and hate and belongings are contrasted.
there are meta works which i adore like HOW EVEN.
like "To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators Of His And Mine"
You say, as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another's said or sung,
'Twere politic to do the like by these;
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
and "https://allpoetry.com/On-Hearing-That..."
Where, where but here have pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle-age?

these off-beat poems are refreshing and radical for wartime poems.

the realist and the mountain tomb might be his most mature works ever in my honest opinion

my favourite from responsibilities "a coat".

[i skipped later poems which include the micheal robartes and the dancer - 1921, the tower - 1928(except for "a man young and old", I really like the lyrical.) and the the winding stairs and the othee poems (except for "anne gregory" and "quarrel at old age")]

--the last poems - 1936 - 1939-- (my favourite batch)
no one poems stands out except for like the pilgrim and the ghost of roger casement. politics is a really good one
How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics,
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.

the black tower is so bittersweet
II

I pace upon the battlements and stare
On the foundations of a house, or where
Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;
And send imagination forth
Under the day's declining beam, and call
Images and memories
From ruin or from ancient trees,
For I would ask a question of them all.

i really love his works. yeats was a brilliant poet and his translations are really good.

5/5 i recommend this to everyone