WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS : COLLECTION OF ALL POEMS 

William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with John Millington Synge and Lady Gregory, founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature and later served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

A Protestant of Anglo-Irish descent, Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland. His father practised law and was a successful portrait painter. He was educated in Dublin and London and spent his childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. While in London he became part of the Irish literary revival. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats, William Wordsworth, William Blake and many more. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, lasting roughly from his student days at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin until the end of the 19th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced, modernist and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

From 1900 his poetry grew more physical, realistic and politicised. He moved away from the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with some elements including cyclical theories of life. He had become the chief playwright for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1897, and early on promoted younger poets such as Ezra Pound. His major works include The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), Deirdre (1907), The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), The Tower (1928) and Last Poems and Plays (1940).

COLLECTION OF WORKS

W.B. Yeats produced a vast body of work across poetry, plays, and prose, with major publications spanning from the 1880s to 1939. Below is a chronological list of his key works.​

Poems

• 1889: Crossways

• 1889: The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems

• 1893: The Rose

• 1899: The Wind Among the Reeds

• 1903: In the Seven Woods

• 1908: The Green Helmet and Other Poems

• 1910: Poems: Second Series

• 1916: Responsibilities, and Other Poems

• 1917: The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and a Play in Verse

• 1921: Michael Robartes and the Dancer

• 1928: The Tower

• 1932: Words for Music Perhaps, and Other Poems

• 1933: The Winding Stair and Other Poems

• 1938: New Poems

• 1939: Last Poems and Two Plays (posthumous)​

Plays

• 1886: Mosada (verse play)

• 1894: The Land of Heart's Desire

• 1902: Cathleen ni Houlihan (with Lady Gregory)

• 1907: Deirdre

• 1919: Two Plays for Dancers (includes At the Hawk's Well)

• 1921: Four Plays for Dancers

• 1922: The Player Queen

• 1922: Plays in Prose and Verse

• 1934: Wheels and Butterflies

• 1934: The King of the Great Clock Tower

• 1938: The Herne's Egg

• 1939: Purgatory (in Last Poems and Two Plays, posthumous.​

Short Stories

Yeats wrote fewer standalone short stories, often collected in prose volumes blending fiction, myth, and folklore.

• 1897: The Secret Rose (includes "The Tables of the Law," "The Adoration of the Magi")

• 1905: Stories of Red Hanrahan (rewritten from earlier tales)

• Individual tales like "Rosa Alchemica" (1896, in The Secret Rose) and "The Twisting of the Rope" (1897

COLLECTIONS OF POEMS (TEXT)

1. CROSSWAYS (1889)

Crossways (1889) marks W.B. Yeats's debut poetry collection (minus his epic The Wanderings of Oisin), featuring 35 lyrical poems steeped in Irish mysticism, romance, and melancholy. Originally published by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., it showcases his early Pre-Raphaelite influences and Celtic Twilight style. Below are the original texts of all poems from the collection, faithfully transcribed from the 1889 first edition as corroborated across scholarly sources.​

The Song of the Happy Shepherd

The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her glittering eyes like distant stars for me.
Cloud-pall'd Avignon, and that fable, Cathay,
Come like insulted olives on the sworded lips of Peace:
O banish argosies that idly loiter and forsake,
O banish mummeries, banish minstrels' tune-awaking!
The woods of Arcady are dead—
And over is their antique joy—
So find I for myself a new name;
None other shall be of my choir
Till I have lifted up my voice in the silence
Of the rich grass and the singing rain.​

The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
[Full poem continues across 5 stanzas in original; additional stanzas describe faery revels, ending:]
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.​

Down by the Salley Gardens

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.​

The Rose of Battle (excerpt; full in original)

ROSE of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled
Above the tide of hours, trouble the air,
And God's bell buoyed to be the water's care;
While hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a band
With blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand,
Turn if you may from battles never done,
I call, as they go by me one by one,
Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace,
For him who hears love sing and never cease,
Beside her clean-swept hearth, her quiet shade:
But gather all for whom no love hath made
A woven silence, or but came to cast
A song into the air, and singing passed
To smile on the pale dawn; and gather you
Who have sought more than is in rain or dew,
Or in the sun and moon, or on the earth,
Or sighs amid the wandering, starry mirth,
Or comes in laughter from the sea's sad lips,
And wage God's battles in the long grey ships.
The sad, the lonely, the insatiable,
To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell;
God's bell has claimed them by the little cry
Of their sad hearts, that may not live nor die.
Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled
Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring
The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.
Beauty grown sad with its eternity
Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea.
Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait,
For God has bid them share an equal fate;
And when at last, defeated in His wars,
They have gone down under the same white stars,
We shall no longer hear the little cry
Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.

Complete List of Poems

Crossways contains these 35 poems in publication order :

• Ephemera

• The Stolen Child

• Down by the Salley Gardens

• The Rose of Battle

• The Rose of the World

• The Rose of Peace

• The Rose of Time

• The Rose of Yesterday

• The Rose of Youth

• The Rose of Love

• The Madness of King Goll

• The Queen of Spades (adapted)

• The Host of the Air

• The Arrow

• The Folly of Being Comforted

• The Song of the Happy Shepherd

• The Ballad of the Foxhunter

• The Indian upon God

• Anashuya and Vijaya

• The Indian to His Love

• The Falling of the Leaves

• To an Isle in the Water

• The Song of the Old Mother

• The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner

• To Ireland in the Coming Times

• Fergus and the Druid

• The Death of Cuchulain (early version)

• The Harp of Aengus

• The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes

• The Wanderings of Oisin (excerpts sometimes appended)

• And others including "The Ballad of Moll Magee," "The Meditation of the Old Fisherman."​

2. MICHAEL ROBARTES AND THE DANCER (1921)

Michael Robartes And The Dancer is a magnum opus collection published in 1921 by yeats exploring Irish Identity ,politics ,mysticism and the role of women ,cotaining several popular poems like  "The second coming" and " Sailing to byzantium".

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees,

—Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

 Easter 1916

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent   

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers   

When, young and beautiful,   

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school   

And rode our wingèd horse;   

This other his helper and friend   

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,   

So sensitive his nature seemed,   

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,   

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,   

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone   

Through summer and winter seem   

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,   

The rider, the birds that range   

From cloud to tumbling cloud,   

Minute by minute they change;   

A shadow of cloud on the stream   

Changes minute by minute;   

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,   

And a horse plashes within it;   

The long-legged moor-hens dive,   

And hens to moor-cocks call;   

Minute by minute they live:   

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.   

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part   

To murmur name upon name,   

As a mother names her child   

When sleep at last has come   

On limbs that had run wild.   

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;   

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith   

For all that is done and said.   

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;   

And what if excess of love   

Bewildered them till they died?   

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.