YEATS 505

what plot it has concerns the fragile, fainting Jennifer and - the spine of the story - her
husband Gerald, the exact, cool aesthete. It has been compared to a tapestry, and among the
mille .fleurs are many phrases and lines from 18th-century literature. Wylie's wide reading in
this period showed itself also in the amusing Venetian Glass Nephew. Her long and perhaps
abnormal admiration for Shelley brought about The Orphan Angel, in which the libertarian
poet is rescued from drowning and accompanies a Yankee sailor to America and across the
continent. This trend toward more realistic treatment continued in Mr. Hodge and Mr.
Hazard, a satirical allegory on the stifling of the late romantics by the Victorians.
Mary Colum, who ranks Wylie as "one of the few important women poets in any
literature," observes, "She seemed to write little out of a mood or out of a passing emotion ...
but nearly always out of complex thought. ... " (Life and the Dream, 1947). Many found her
poems cold; the fastidious speaker seeks isolation and death. A last group of sonnets,
however, shows a capacity for love: "And so forget to weep, forget to grieve, I And wake, and
touch each other's hands, and turn/Upon a bed of juniper and fern." H. Ludecke (in English
Studies 20, December 1938) finds her not a "great" poet but a "rare" poet: "Refinement is
her essential characteristic as an artist."

-Alice R. Bensen

YEATS, William Butler. Irish. Born in Sandymount, County Dublin, 13 June 1865; son
of the artist John Butler Yeats, and brother of the artist Jack Butler Yeats; lived in London,
1874-83. Educated at Godolphin School, Hammersmith, London; Erasmus Smith School,
Dublin ; studied art in Dublin, I 883-8 6; left art school to concentrate on poetry. Married
Georgie Hyde-Lees in 1917; one son and one daughter. Lived mainly in London, spending
part of each year in Ireland, 189o-J921 : a Founder of the Rhymers Club, London, and
member of the Yellow Book group; met Lady Gregory, 18 96, and thereafter spent many of his
summer holidays at her home in Sligo; Co-Founder, with Lady Gregory and Edward
Martyn, Irish Literary Theatre, later Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1899: Director of the Abbey
Theatre, 1904 until his death; Editor of Beltaine, 1899-1900, Samhain, 190H)8, and The
Arrow, 1906-09; settled with his family in Ireland, 1922: Senator of the Irish Free State,
1922-28. Recipient: Nobel Prize, 1923. D.Litt.: Oxford University, 1931; Cambridge
University; University of Dublin. Died 28 January 1939.

PUBLICATIONS

Collections

Letters, edited by Allan Wade. 1954.

Poems, Prose, Plays, and Criticism (selections), edited by A. Norman Jeffares. 4 vols.,
1963-64
Variorum Edition of the Plays, edited by Russell and C. C. Alspach. 1966.
Variorum Edition of the Poems, edited by Peter Alit and Russell Alspach. 1967.
506 YEATS

Verse

Mosada: A Dramatic Poem. 1886.

The Wanderings ofOisin and Other Poems. 1889.
The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics. 1892.
Poems. 1895; revised edition, 1899, 1901, 1904, 1908, 1912, 1913, 1927, 1929.
The Wind among the Reeds. 1899.
In the Seven Woods, Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age. 1903.
Poems 1899-/905. 1906.
Poetical Works: Lyrical Poems, Dramatic Poems. 2 vols., 1906--07.
Poems, Second Series. 1909.
The Green Helmet and Other Poems. 1910; revised edition, 1912.
A Selection from the Poetry. 1913.
A Selection from the Love Poetry. 1913.
Poems Written in Discouragement 1912-13. 1913.
Nine Poems. 1914.
Responsibilities: Poems and a Play. 1914.
Responsibilities and Other Poems. 1916.
The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses, and a Play in Verse. 191 7; revised edition,
1919.
Nine Poems. 1918.
Michael Robartes and the Dancer. 1921.
Selected Poems. 1921.
Later Poems (Collected Works I). 1922.
Seven Poems and a Fragment. 1922.
The Cat and the Moon and Certain Poems. 1924.
October Blast. 1927.
The Tower. 1928.
Selected Poems, Lyrical and Narrative. 1929.
The Winding Stair. 1929.
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems. 1932.
The Winding Stair and Other Poems. 1933.
Collected Poems. 1933; revised edition, 1950.
Wheels and Butterflies. 1934.
The King of the Great Clock Tower: Commentaries and Poems. 1934.
A Full Moon in March. 1935.
Poems. 1935.
New Poems. 1938.
Last Poems and Two Plays. 1939.
Selected Poems, edited by A. Holst. 1939.
Last Poems and Plays. 1940.
The Poems. 2 vols., 1949.

Plays

The Countess Kathleen (produced 1899). In The Countess Kathleen and Various
Legends and Lyrics, 1892; revised version as The Countess Cathleen, 1912.
The Land of Heart's Desire (produced 1894).
The Shadowy Waters (produced 1904). 1900; revised version, in Poems, 1906.
Diarmuid and Grania, with George Moore (produced 190 I). 1951 ; edited by Anthony
Farrow, 1974.
Cathleen ni Hoolihan (produced 1902). I 902.
The Pot of Broth (produced 1902). In The Hour Glass and Other Plays, 1904.
 YEATS 507

Where There Is Nothing (produced 1904). 1902; revised version, with Lady Gregory,
as The Unicorn from the Stars (produced 1907), 1908.
The Hour Glass: A Morality (produced 1903). 1903; revised version (produced 1913),
in The Mask, April 1913.
The King's Threshold (produced 1903). 1904; revised version (produced 1913), in
Poems, 1906.
The Hour Glass and Other Plays, Being Volume 2 of Plays for an Irish Theatre (includes
Cathleen ni Houlihan and The Pot of Broth). 1904.
On Baile's Strand (produced 1904). In Plays for an Irish Theatre 3, 1904; revised
version, in Poems, 1906.
Deirdre (produced 1906). In Plays for an Irish Theatre 5, 1907.
The Golden Helmet (produced 1908). 1908; revised version, as The Green Helmet
(produced 1910), 1910.
At the Hawk's Well; or, Waters of Immortality (produced 1916). In The Wild Swans at
Coole, 1917.
The Dreaming of the Bones (produced 1931). In Two Playsfor Dancers, 1919.
Two Plays for Dancers (includes The Dreaming of the Bones and The Only Jealousy of
Emer). 1919.
The Player Queen (produced 1919). 1922.
Four Plays for Dancers (includes At the Hawk's Well, The Only Jealousy of Emer, The
Dreaming of the Bones, Calvary). 1921.
Plays in Prose and Verse (Collected Works 2). 1922.
Plays and Controversies (Collected Works 3). 1923.
King Oedipus, from the play by Sophocles (produced 1926). 1928.
The Resurrection (produced 1934). 1927.
Oedipus at Co/onus, from the play by Sophocles (produced 1927). In Collected Plays,
1934.
Fighting the Waves (produced 1929). In Wheels and Butterflies, 1934.
The Words upon the Window Pane. 1934.
Collected Plays. 1934; revised edition, 1952.
Nine One-Act Plays. 1937.
The Herne's Egg. 1938.
The Herne's Egg and Other Plays (includes A Full Moon in March and The King of the
Great Clock Tower). 1938.
Purgatory and The Death of Cuchulain, in Last Poems and Two Plays. 1939.

Fiction

John Sherman and Dhoya. 1891.

The Secret Rose (stories). 1897.
The Tables of the Law; The Adoration of the Magi. 1897.
Stories of Red Hanrahan. 1905.

Other

The Celtic Twilight: Men and Women, Dhouls and Fairies. 1893; revised edition, 1902.
Literary Ideals in Ireland, with AE and John Eglinton. 1899.
Is the Order of R.R. and A.C. to Remain a Magical Order? 1901.
Ideas of Good and Evil. 1903.
Discoveries: A Volume of Essays. 1907.
Collected Works. 8 vols., 1908.
Poetry and Ireland: Essays, with Lionel Johnson. 1908.
508 YEATS

Synge and the Ireland of His Time. 1911.

The Culling of an Agate. 1912; revised edition, 1919.
Reveries over Childhood and Youth. 1915.
Per Arnica Silentia Lunae. 1918.
Four Years. 1921.
The Trembling of the Veil. 1922.
Essays (Collected Works 4). 1924.
A Vision. 1925; revised edition, 1937; edited by George Mills Harper and W. K. Hood,
1978.
Early Poems and Stories (Collected Works 5). 1925.
Estrangement, Being Some Fifty Thoughts from a Diary Kept in 1909. 1926.
Autobiographies (Collected Works 6). 1926.
The Death of Synge and Other Passages from an Old Diary. 1928.
A Packet for Ezra Pound. 1929.
Stories of Michael Robartes and His Friends. 1932.
Letters to the New Islands, edited by Horace Reynolds. 1934.
Dramatis Personae. 1935.
Dramatis Personae 1896-1902. 1936.
Essays 193/ to 1936. 1937.
The Autobiography. 1938; revised edition, as Autobiographies, 1955.
On the Boiler (essays, includes verse). 1939.
If I Were Four-and- Twenty. 1940.
Pages from a Diary Wrillen in 1930. 1940.
The Senate Speeches, edited by Donald Pearce. 1960.
Reflections, edited by Curtis Bradford. 1970.
Ah, Sweet Dancer: Yeats and Margaret Ruddock: A Correspondence, edited by Roger
McHugh. 1970.
Uncollected Prose, edited by John F. Frayne and Colton Johnson. 2 vols., 197Q-74.
Interviews and Recollections, edited by E. H. Mikhail. 1977.
The Correspondence of Robert Bridges and Yeats, edited by J. Finneran. 1977.

Editor, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. 1888; as Irish Fairy and Folk
Tales, 1893.
Editor, Stories from Carleton. 1889.
Editor, Representative Irish Tales. 1891.
Editor, Irish Fairy Tales. 1892.
Editor, with E. Ellis, The Works of Blake. 3 vols., 1893.
Editor, The Poems of Blake. 1893.
Editor, A Book of Irish Verse. 1895; revised edition, 1900.
Editor, A Book of Images Drawn by W. Horton. 1898.
Editor, Twenty-One Poems, by lionel Johnson. 1905.
Editor, Some Essays and Passages, by John Eglinton. 1905.
Editor, Sixteen Poems, by William Allingham. 1905.
Editor, Poems of Spenser. 1906.
Editor, Twenty-One Poems, by Katharine Tynan. 1907.
Editor, Poems and Translations, by J. M. Synge. 1909.
Editor, Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsany. 1912.
Editor, with F. Higgins, Broadsides: A Collection of Old and New Songs. 2 vols.,
1935-37.
Editor, The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935. 1936.
Editor, The Ten Principal Upanishads, translated by Shree Purohit Swami and
Yeats. 1937.

Bibliography: A Bibliography of the Writings of Yeats by Allan Wade, 1951, revised edition,
 YEATS 509

1958, additions by Russell Alspach, in Irish Book 2, 1963; Yeats: A Classified Bibliography of
Criticism by K. P. S. Jochum, 1978.

Reading List: The Poetry of Yeats by Louis MacNeice, 1941; Yeats: The Man and the Masks,
1948, and The Identity of Yeats, 1954, revised edition, 1964, both by Richard Ellmann; The
Golden Nightingale: Essays on Some Principles of Poetry in the Lyrics of Yeats by Donald
Stauffer, 1949; Yeats: The Tragic Phase: A Study of the Last Poems by V. Koch, 1951;
Prolegomena to the Study ofYeat's Poems and Plays by G. B. Saul, 2 vols., 1957-58; Yeats the
Playwright: A Commentary on Character and Design in the Major Plays by Peter Ure, 1963;
Between the Lines: Yeats's Poetry in the Making by Jon Stallworthy, 1963; Yeats's Vision and
the Later Poems by Helen Vendler, 1963; Yeats: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by
John Unterecker, 1963; Yeats's Golden Dawn by George Mills Harper, 1974; A Commentary
on the Collected Plays of Yeats by A. Norman Jeffares and A. S. Knowland, 1974; Yeats's
Early Poetry: The Quest for Reconciliation by Frank: Murphy, 1975; Yeats: The Critical
Heritage edited by A. Norman Jeffares, 1976.

William Butler Yeats wrote his early poetry out of a love of a particular place, Sligo, in the
West of Ireland, with its folklore, its belief in the supernatural, and its legends. He found
material for his own mythology in translations of the Gaelic tales into English. These tales of
the Red Branch cycle and the Fenian cycle became tinged in his handling with fin de siecle
melancholy, with what was called the Celtic twilight. His first long poem, "The Wanderings
of Oisin," was founded upon Gaelic pagan legends and gave an account of Oisin visiting three
islands in the other-world. In "The Rose" his poems developed this use of Gaelic material,
and his Rose symbolism showed the effect of his editing Blake and his interest in the occult
tradition, as well as the effect of his love for Maud Gonne. The Wind among the Reeds
contains more elaborate poetry, intense, at times obscurely allusive, drawing upon Gaelic
mythology and Rosicrucian images ("The Secret Rose"), defeatist in its romantic poems (the
devotion of "He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"), and filled with a delicate melancholic
beauty.
He began to change this style; In the Seven Woods contains more personal, realistic poems
("The Folly of Being Comforted," "Adam's Curse"). The Green Helmet records the emptiness
of love, now Maud Gonne had married (there is exalted celebration of her beauty in "No
Second Troy" and "Words"). He reflects on how he seemed to have lost spontaneity ("All
Things can tempt me from this craft of verse"). His Collected Works had appeared in 1908;
but he found a new kind of poetic voice in Responsibilities; this is the antithesis of his early
work; stripped of decoration and mystery it is savagely satiric in its defence of art against the
philistines. He draws images of aristocratic patronage from Renaissance Italy, he contrasts
contemporary Ireland with the past, filled with brave leaders ("September 1913 "), he reflects
on Irish ingratitude ("To a Shade"), and in his poems on beggars and hermits transmits
enjoyment of coarse vitality. And yet there is still the magnificence of vision in "The Cold
Heaven." "A Coat" repudiates the celtic "embroideries out of old mythologies"; now he is
walking naked. The Wild Swans at Coole continues his praise of Maud Gonne ("The People"
and "Broken Dreams"); his elegy on Major Robert Gregory and "An Irish Airman Forsees
His Death" mark a new capacity for elevating the personal into heroic stature; and his three
poems "Ego Dominus Tuus," "The Phases of the Moon," and "The Double Vision of
Michael Robartes" reflect his interest in putting his thoughts into order, into some kind of
system. This found its best poetic expression in "The Second Coming" of Michael Robartes
and the Dancer which also contained his poems (notably "Easter 1916 ") on the Rising. Other
poems record his marriage, and" A Prayer for My Daughter" attacks the intellectual hatred of
Maud Gonne.
These two volumes showed Yeats emerging from the wintry rages of Responsibilities into a
new appreciation of beauty balanced against tragedy. His own life had blossomed: marriage,
5\0 YEATS

children, his tower in the west of Ireland, the Nobel Prize for poetry, membership of the Irish
Senate- and, above all, the writing of A Vision which gave him a "system of symbolism," a
structure for his thought, and the confidence to write fully of his interests - he was now a
sufficient subject for his poetry. And how superbly he wrote in The Tower of his ideas on life,
on death. "Sailing to Byzantium," "The Tower," "Meditations in Time of Civil War,"
"Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen," "Leda and the Swan," "Among School Children," and
"All Soul's Night" have a lofty·but passionate authority about them. He was discovering his
own intellectual ancestry among the eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish, expressed in "Blood and
the Man" and "The Seven Sages" of The Winding Stair. Here, too, are the extremes of
"vacillation," the contemplation of death after life in "Byzantium," and the noble poems on
his friends Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz, and on Lady Gregory at Coole Park in
1929 and again in 19 31 - "we were the last romantics," he cried, realising "all is changed."
This note is there in A Full Moon in March, where "An age is the reversal of an age"; and, as
Yeats grows older, the brilliant metaphysical compression of "The Four Ages of Man" strikes
a note which runs through Last Poems, which records heroic stances in the face of coming
death - of civilization and the self. There are, of course, as ever, the poems on love, the
celebration of his friends ("The Municipal Galley Revisited" and "Beautiful Lofty Things"),
the despairing recognition of the foul rag and bone shop ofthe heart, the recording of his own
views on Ireland, on poetry, and on himself in "Under Ben Bulben" and, most movingly, in
"The Man and the Echo."
Yeats began writing plays in his teens- heroic plays with little dramatic content. But he left
conventional modes behind with The Countess Cathleen, written for Maud Gonne, and with
the aim of blending pagan legend with Christian belief. Yeats revised this play extensively, as
he did The Shadowy Waters, a study of the heroic gesture, carried by somewhat cryptic
symbolism. He also wrote some short plays for the Irish National Dramatic Society, notably
the revolutionary Cathleen ni Houlihan. The King's Threshold marks a change in Yeats's
heroes from passivity to more active roles - Seanchan the poet hero in this play (founded
upon a middle-Irish story) asserts the place of poetry in public life. Yeats was also deeply
interested in Cuchulain, the hero of the Red Branch cycle of stories, and in On Baile's Strand
he used the story of Cuchulain unwittingly killing his own son. In Deirdre he conferred a
lofty dignity upon Deirdre's suicide after the heroic gesture made by her and Naoise when
they realise they are doomed. In The Golden Helmet, rewritten in verse as The Green Helmet,
Yeats used an old Irish tale as basis for an ironical farce, another "moment of intense life."
The strangeness of Yeats's imagination and his very real capacity for farce emerged in The
Player Queen, which is most effective on stage and extends the theories which were first
elaborated in the prose work Per A mica Silentia Lunae.
Yeats found the Abbey Theatre was not suitable for the plays he wanted to write: his Four
Plays for Dancers arose in part out of his interest in the Japanese Noh drama to which Ezra
Pound had introduced him. He wanted to do without an orthodox theatre, and so the ritual of
music and dancing aided the mysterious art he sought. At the Hawk's Well and The Only
Jealousy of Emer develop the Cuchulain mythology, while The Dreaming of the Bones blends
supernatural with political themes. Calvary is more complex, and depends upon A Vision's
ideas. A later play, Resurrection, is far more effective, being intense and economic in its
presentation of abstract ideas against a turbulent background. His versions of King Oedipus
and Oedipus at Co/onus capture the essence of the Greek tragedies with success, and his sense
of dialogue and neat construction make The Words upon the Window Pane a tour de force,
communicating via a glance the agony in Swift's spirit. After The King of the Great Clock
Tower, A Full Moon in March, and The Herne's Egg, another examination of the limitations
of the hero's role, came Purgatory, a brilliant evocation of the history of a ruined house and
its family, bound in a murderous cycle. The Death of Cuchulain written just before Yeats's
death in 1939 examines the proud disdain of his hero for death.
Yeats wrote a large number of articles and reviews up to the end of the century; these were
mainly on Irish writing. His first extended prose work was John Sherman and Dhoya, fiction
which gave his youthful impressions of Sligo. The essays in The Celtic Twilight portrayed the
 YOUNG 511

traditional beliefs and scenery of the West of Ireland in limpid prose, but The Secret Rose
contained more complex stories, a mixture of symbolism and mysticism written in that
"artificial elaborate English" which was popular in the 1890's. His mannered prose appeared
in The Tables of the Law and The Adoration of the Magi. By the turn of the century he
changed his prose style, revised The Celtic Twilight and some of the stories in The Secret
Rose. Ideas of Good and Evil contained essays written earlier in his complex style. The need
for propaganda for the Abbey Theatre further simplified his style, and he was influenced by
Lady Gregory's use of the idiomatic language of country people in her translations from the
Irish.
In his autobiographical writings Yeats created an evocative, richly patterned record of his
own unique experience, and of his family and his friends. His diaries, some of which were
published in Estrangement, show his attempts to achieve unity. And his thought, based on
most diverse sources, appeared in A Vision which contains many witty as well as profound
passages as he got "it all in order." His prose became more flexible, ranging between
complexity and simplicity - "The Bounty of Sweden" is a good example. Some of his senate
speeches are excellent pieces of rhetoric. His introduction to The Words upon the Window-
Pane (1934) shows his capacity for imaginative meditation and creative criticism. The many
introductions he wrote to the work of writers he admired contain a lofty generosity. On the
other hand, his airing of opinions - and prejudices- in On the Boiler has an engaging touch of
the outrageous. His intellectual curiosity, his originality, and his ability to convey his ideas
attractively appears in his correspondence, notably in his youthful letters to Katharine Tynan
and his later unreserved, lively letters to Mrs. Shakespeare. His criticism is beginning to be
appreciated more fully as the complexity and strength of his mind are understood.

-A. Norman Jeffares

YOUNG, Andrew (John). Scottish. Born in Elgin, 29 April 1885. Educated at the Royal
High School, Edinburgh; University of Edinburgh, M.A. 1908; New College, Edinburgh;
ordained a minister of the United Free Church of Scotland. Worked with the Y.M.C.A. in
France during World War I. Married Janet Green in 1914; one son and one daughter. Joined
the Church of England, 1939, and after a few months at Wells Theological College became
Curate of Plaistow, West Sussex, 1940; Vicar of Stonegate, Sussex, 1941 until his retirement,
1959. Canon of Chichester Cathedral, 1948-71. Recipient: Royal Society of literature
Benson Medal, 1939; Heinemann Award, 1946; Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 1952; Duff
Cooper Memorial Prize, 1960. LL.D.: University of Edinburgh, 1951. Fellow of the Royal
Society of literature. Died 2 5 November 19 71.

PuBLICATIONS

Collections

Complete Poems, edited by Leonard Clark. 1974

Verse

Songs of Night. 1910.

Cecil Barclay Simpson: A Memorial by Two Friends, with D. Baillie. 1918.