(review to follow when I get hold of the book again)

Yeates

My favourite poet. Yeates is a great man and a genius wordsmith. Can easily be read and reread, always finding something new.

My personal favourites were, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death", "The Dawn", "The Fisherman", "Ego Domnius Tuus", and "Two Songs Of A Fool".

This will probably say more about my ignorance regarding early 20th Century poetry, but I didn't really enjoy it. The selection are based on ageing and death, and the cruelty of the huge loss of life at wartime. I haven't much experience with poetry, but am reading a second book by Yeats, The Celtic Twilight, a collection of short stories and I am already enjoying these. So, maybe its the subject I don't like so much, maybe the medium...not really sure.

"The Wild Swans At Coole", W.B. Yeats
A poem about a heart sore from love. Opens with:
"The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans. .."

Terrific midlife crisis Yeats!

“Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?”

A collection of 40 poems from 1919. Highlights - "the wild swans at coole" "the fisherman" "an Irish airman foresees his death" "the cat and the moon"

Another wonderful volume of poetry from Yeats, this is streaked through with a deep, weary sadness that wasn’t as prevalent in the previous volumes I’ve read. Very moving in places.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate-
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor angry crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Lindo.

"I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;"

Meditations on aging and death.