W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) began writing poetry as a devotee of Blake, Shelley, the pre-Raphaelites, and of nineteenth-century Irish poets including James Clarence Mangan and Samuel Ferguson. By the end of his life, he had, as T.S. Eliot said, created a poetic language for the twentieth century. The First Yeats deepens our understanding of the making of that poetic imagination, reprinting the original texts of Yeats's three early collections, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1899), The Countess of Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (1892), and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). The poems were subsequently heavily revised or discarded. Among them are some of the best-loved poems in English – 'The LakeIsle of Innisfree', 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' – fresh and unfamiliar here in their original contexts, together with Yeats's lengthy notes which were drastically cut in the collected editions.

This illuminating edition by Edward Larrissy, editor of W.B. Yeats, The Major Works (Oxford University Press, 2000), includes an introduction that clarifies the literary, historical and intellectual context of the poems, detailed notes, and a bibliography. It offers essential material for reading –and revaluing – one of the great modern poets.

Cover image: Front cover of The Wind Among the Reeds (4th edn, Elkin Matthews 1903) by Althea Gyles(detail). Copyright © The British Library Board 2010. All rights reserved. Cover design StephenRaw.com

Contents


Introduction ix
A Note on the Text xviii
Bibliography xx

THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN AND OTHER POEMS (1889)
The Wanderings of Oisin
Time and the Witch Vivien
The Stolen Child
Girl’s Song
Ephemera
An Indian Song
Kanva, the Indian, on God
Kanva on Himself
Jealousy
Song of the Last Arcadian
King Goll
The Meditation of the Old Fisherman
The Ballad of Moll Magee
The Phantom Ship
A Lover’s Quarrel among the Fairies
Mosada
How Ferencz Renyi Kept Silent
The Fairy Doctor
Falling of the Leaves
Miserrimus
The Priest and the Fairy
The Fairy Pedant
She who Dwelt among the Sycamores
On Mr Nettleship’s Picture at the Royal Hibernian Academy
A Legend
An Old Song Re-sung
Street Dancers
To an Isle in the Water
Quatrains and Aphorisms
The Seeker
Island of Statues

LEGENDS AND LYRICS (1892)
To the Rose upon the Rood of Time
Fergus and the Druid
The Rose of the World
The Peace of the Rose
The Death of Cuchullin
The White Birds
Father Gilligan
Father O’Hart
When You Are Old
The Sorrow of Love
The Ballad of the Old Foxhunter
A Fairy Song
The Pity of Love
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
A Cradle Song (‘The angels are bending’)
The Man who Dreamed of Fairyland
Dedication of ‘Irish Tales’
The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner
When You Are Sad
The Two Trees
They Went Forth to the Battle, But They Always Fell
An Epitaph
Apologia Addressed to Ireland in the Coming Days
Yeats’s Notes

THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS (1899)
The Hosting of the Sidhe
The Everlasting Voices
The Moods
Aedh Tells of the Rose in his Heart
The Host of the Air
Breasal the Fisherman
A Cradle Song (‘The Danann children laugh...’)
Into the Twilight
The Song of Wandering Aengus
The Song of the old Mother
The Fiddler of Dooney
The Heart of the Woman
Aedh Laments the Loss of Love
Mongan Laments the Change that has Come upon him
and his Beloved
Michael Robartes Bids his Beloved Be at Peace
Hanrahan Reproves the Curlew
Michael Robartes Remembers Forgotten Beauty
A Poet to his Beloved
Aedh Gives his Beloved Certain Rhymes
To My Heart, Bidding it Have No Fear
The Cap and Bells
The Valley of the Black Pig

Michael Robartes Asks Forgiveness Because of his
Many Moods
Aedh Tells of a Valley Full of Lovers
Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty
Aedh Hears the Cry of the Sedge
Aedh Thinks of Those who have Spoken Evil of his Beloved
The Blessed
The Secret Rose
Hanrahan Laments because of his Wanderings
The Travail of Passion
The Poet Pleads with his Friend for old Friends
Hanrahan Speaks to the Lovers of his Songs in Coming Days
Aedh Pleads with the Elemental Powers
Aedh Wishes his Beloved were Dead
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Mongan Thinks of his Past Greatness

Yeats’s Notes

Notes on the Poems
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines