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William Butler YeatsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In many ways, Yeats embodied the complexity of Ireland at the turn of the century, and his writings tapped into that intersection between English and Irish traditions. He was born into a protestant, Anglo-Irish family, then a minority in Ireland, but did not share the idea that he was essentially an Englishman in Ireland. Instead, he embraced his Irish nationality, often drawing on Irish legends, heroes, and Celtic myth in his poetry and plays, even when writing in London in his early years. His poetry was similarly influenced by English poets, such as John Donne, Edmund Spencer, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, his many friendships and associations with other authors and Irish nationalists in the 1890s solidified his enduring project to create identifiably Irish content. At the time that he published The Rose (1893), he developed a deep interest in the occult and joined a secret society that performed magic rituals. Yet, these beliefs did not heavily penetrate his poetry; on the contrary, Yeats often relied on familiar traditions and everyday images, focusing on craftsmanship, structure and the aesthetic of the work. “When You Are Old” reflects many of these intersecting influences in his life, from the neatly metered structure of the poem and its sonnet-like form, to the mystical temporal shifts between past, present, and future that conclude with a classical
By William Butler Yeats
Among School Children
William Butler Yeats
A Prayer for My Daughter
William Butler Yeats
A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka
William Butler Yeats
Cathleen Ni Houlihan
William Butler Yeats
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
William Butler Yeats
Death
William Butler Yeats
Easter, 1916
William Butler Yeats
Leda and the Swan
William Butler Yeats
No Second Troy
William Butler Yeats
Sailing to Byzantium
William Butler Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
William Butler Yeats
The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
The Wild Swans at Coole
William Butler Yeats