William Butler Yeats, born in
Ireland of Anglo-Irish parents, is arguably the
greatest poet of the twentieth century. As a
poet and a visionary he was always influenced by
the symbols of Ireland's eternal beauty as
opposed to the changing social order in England.
The main themes of Yeats’s poetry are Irish
nationalism, Celtic mythology, love, ageing and
mysticism. But the last mentioned seems to be
interpenetrating all his work. As he wrote: "The
mystical life is the centre of all that I do and
all that I think and all that I write." Yeats
was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1923.
This collection has the final revised
versions of fourteen books of lyrical poems, his
narrative and dramatic poetry, and his own notes
on individual poems.
