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- The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
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William Butler Yeats is widely considered to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. He belonged to the Protestant, Anglo-Irish minority that had controlled the economic, political, social, and cultural life of Ireland since at least the end of the 17th century. Most members of this minority considered themselves English people who happened to have been born in Ireland, but Yeats was staunch in affirming his Irish nationality. Although he lived in London for 14 years of his childhood (and kept a permanent home there during the first half of his adult life), Yeats maintained his cultural roots, featuring Irish legends and heroes in many of his poems and plays. He was equally firm in adhering to his self-image as an artist. This conviction led many to accuse him of elitism, but it also unquestionably contributed to his greatness. As fellow poet W.H. Auden noted in a...
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Poems By William Butler Yeats
- The Mountain Tomb
- To a Child Dancing upon the Shore
- Fallen Majesty
- Love and the Bird
- The Realists
- The Grey Rock
- The Two Kings
- To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing
- Paudeen
- To a Shade
- When Helen Lived
- Beggar to Beggar Cried
- The Witch
- The Peacock
- Running to Paradise
- The Player Queen
- To a Child Dancing in the Wind
- The Magi
- A Coat
- The Dawn
- On Woman
- The Fisherman
- The Hawk
- Memory
- The Thorn Tree
- The Phoenix
- There Is a Queen in China
- The Scholars
- Ego Dominus Tuus
- The Only Jealousy of Emer
- A Prayer for My Daughter
- Poems and Commentaries: Supernatural
- Supernatural Songs
- Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn
- Ribh Prefers an Older Theology
- Ribh Considers Christian Love Insufficient
- He and She
- The Four Ages of Man
- Conjunctions
- A Needle's Eye
- Meru
- Three Songs to the Same Tune
- A Full Moon in March
- The Watch-Fire
- To the Rose upon the Rood of Time
- The Lake Isle of Innisfree
- The Sorrow of Love
- When You Are Old
- The Cap and Bells
- Adam's Curse
- The Fascination of What’s Difficult
- The Cold Heaven
- The Wild Swans at Coole
- Easter, 1916
- The Second Coming
- Sailing to Byzantium
- Among School Children
- A Dialogue of Self and Soul
- Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
- Byzantium
- Lapis Lazuli
- Under Ben Bulben
- The Circus Animals’ Desertion
- No Second Troy
- Down By the Salley Gardens
- A Drinking Song
- The Song of Wandering Aengus
- The Song of the Happy Shepherd
- The Sad Shepherd
- To an Isle in the Water
- To Ireland in the Coming Times
- The Everlasting Voices
- The Fish
- He wishes his Beloved were Dead
- Never give all the Heart
- Reconciliation
- September 1913
- An Irish Airman foresees his Death
- On being asked for a War Poem
- Sixteen Dead Men
- The Rose Tree
- On a Political Prisoner
- A Meditation in Time of War
- The Tower
- Politics
- In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz
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Poetry
The oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English language.
