Poems

Poems

By

3
(1 Review)
Poems by William Butler Yeats

Published:

1912

Pages:

190

Downloads:

6,424

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Poems

By

3
(1 Review)
PrefaceDuring the last year I have spent much time altering

Book Excerpt

wrapped up in dreams of terrors to come That he can give no help.

MARY

You have still some way, But I can put you on the trodden path Your servants take when they are marketing. But first sit down and rest yourself awhile, For my old fathers served your fathers, lady, Longer than books can tell--and it were strange If you and yours should not be welcome here.

CATHLEEN

And it were stranger still were I ungrateful For such kind welcome--but I must be gone, For the night's gathering in.

SHEMUS

It is a long while Since I've set eyes on bread or on what buys it.

CATHLEEN

So you are starving even in this wood, Where I had thought I would find nothing changed. But that's a dream, for the old worm o' the world Can eat its way into what place it pleases.

(She gives money.)

TEIG

Beautiful lady, give me something too; I fell but now, being weak with hunger and thirst And lay upon the threshold like a log.

CATHLEEN

I gave

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A collection of poems and two one-act plays: The Countess Cathleen, and The Land of Heart's Desire. The plays are excellent. The poems are mainly his early ballads of ancient Ireland--kings, heroes, and doomed maidens. The two best are The Lake Isle at Innisfree, and When You Are Old.

The problem is that the line endings have not been preserved. From the end rhymes and capitalizations (of the next word) you can tell where the line should have ended)--if you are paying attention. But it becomes too easy to read the stanzas as paragraphs of prose. That doesn't affect the plays, but it does sort of congeal the poems.

The work is good; the formating sucks.