Responsibilities & Other Poems: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

By W B Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) is best described as Ireland’s national poet in addition to being one of the major twentieth-century literary figures of the English tongue. To many literary critics, Yeats represents the ‘Romantic poet of modernism,’ which is quite revealing about his extraordinary style that combines between the outward emphasis on the expression of emotions and the extensive use of symbolism, imagery and allusions. Yeats also wrote prose and drama and established himself as the spokesman of the Irish cause. His fame was greatly boosted mainly after he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. His life was marked by his many love stories, by his great interest in oriental mysticism and occultism as well as by political engagement since he served as an Irish senator for two terms. Today, although William Butler Yeats’s contribution to literary modernism and to Irish nationalism remains incontestable. Here we publish a collection of his poems that show just why his works are held in such esteem together with a new version of his play The Hour Glass.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copyright Group
• Release date: Nov 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781783946877

W B Yeats

William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 in County Dublin. With his much-loved early poems such as 'The Stolen Child', and 'He Remembers Forgotten Beauty', he defined the Celtic Twilight mood of the late-Victorian period and led the Irish Literary Renaissance. Yet his style evolved constantly, and he is acknowledged as a major figure in literary modernism and twentieth-century European letters. T. S. Eliot described him as 'one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them'. W. B. Yeats died in 1939.

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Responsibilities & Other Poems by William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) was born in Dublin, educated both there and in London.

He is best described as Ireland’s national poet in addition to being one of the major twentieth-century literary figures of the English tongue. To many literary critics, Yeats represents the ‘Romantic poet of modernism’ – an extraordinary style that combines the outward emphasis on the expression of emotions and the extensive use of symbolism, imagery and allusions.

Yeats also wrote extensively for prose and drama and established himself as the spokesman of the Irish cause.

His fame was greatly boosted after he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

Yeat’s life was marked by his many love stories, by his great interest in oriental mysticism and occultism as well as by political engagement; he served as an Irish senator for two terms.

Today William Butler Yeats’s contribution to literary modernism and to Irish nationalism remains incontestable. 

Here we publish a collection of his poems that show just why his works are held in such esteem together with a new version of his play The Hour Glass.  

Index Of Poems

Responsibilities

The Grey Rock

The Two Kings

To a Wealthy Man

September 1913

To a Friend Whose Work has Come to Nothing

Paudeen

To a Shade

When Helen Lived

The Attack on 'The Playboy of the Western World,' 1907

The Three Beggars

The Three Hermits

Beggar to Beggar Cried

The Well and the Tree

Running to Paradise

The Hour Before Dawn

The Player Queen

The Realists

The Witch

The Peacock

The Mountain Tomb

To a Child Dancing in the Wind

A Memory of Youth

Fallen Majesty

Friends

The Cold Heaven

That the Night Come

An Appointment

The Magi

The Dolls

A Coat

Closing Rhymes

His Dream

A Woman Homer Sung

The Consolation

No Second Troy

Reconciliation

King and No King

Peace

Against Unworthy Praise

The Fascination of What's Difficult

A Drinking Song

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

On Hearing That the Students of Our New University have Joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians

To a Poet

The Mask

Upon a House Shaken by the Land Agitation

At the Abbey Theatre

These are the Clouds

At Galway Races

A Friend's Illness

All Things Can Tempt Me

The Young Man's Song

THE HOUR-GLASS – 1912 (New Version)

NOTES

W.B. Yeats – A Short Biography

'In dreams begins responsibility.'

Old Play.

'How am I fallen from myself, for a long time now

I have not seen the Prince of Chang in my dreams.'

Khoung-fou-tseu.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain

Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,

Old Dublin merchant 'free of ten and four'

Or trading out of Galway into Spain;

And country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,

A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;

Traders or soldiers who have left me blood

That has not passed through any huxter's loin,

Pardon, and you that did not weigh the cost,

Old Butlers when you took to horse and stood

Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne

Till your bad master blenched and all was lost;

You merchant skipper that leaped overboard

After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,

You most of all, silent and fierce old man

Because you were the spectacle that stirred

My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say

'Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun';

Pardon that for a barren passion's sake,

Although I have come close on forty-nine

I have no child, I have nothing but a book,

Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.

January 1914.

THE GREY ROCK

Poets with whom I learned my trade,

Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,

Here's an old story I've re-made,

Imagining 'twould better please

Your ears than stories now in fashion,

Though you may think I waste my breath

Pretending that there can be passion

That has more life in it than death,

And though at bottling of your wine

The bow-legged Goban had no say;

The moral's yours because it's mine.

When cups went round at close of day

Is not that how good stories run?

Somewhere within some hollow hill,

If books speak truth in Slievenamon,

But let that be, the gods were still

And sleepy, having had their meal,

And smoky torches made a glare

On painted pillars, on a deal

Of fiddles and of flutes hung there

By the ancient holy hands that brought them

From murmuring Murias, on cups

Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,

And put his pattern round their tops

To hold the wine they buy of him.

But from the juice that made them wise

All those had lifted up the dim

Imaginations of their eyes,

For one that was like woman made

Before their sleepy eyelids ran

And trembling with her passion said,

'Come out and dig for a dead man,

Who's burrowing somewhere in the ground,

And mock him to his face and then

Hollo him on with horse and hound,

For he is the worst of all dead men.'

We should be dazed and terror struck,

If we but saw in dreams that room,

Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck

That emptied all our days to come.

I knew a woman none could please,

Because she dreamed when but a child

Of men and women made like these;

And after, when her blood ran wild,

Had ravelled her own story out,

And said, 'In two or in three years

I need