The Tower
By W. B. Yeats
()
About this ebook
The Irish Nobel Prize–winning poet meditates on life, age, and reality in this most-famous collection of his work.
Originally published in 1928, The Tower is W. B. Yeats’s first collection of poetry as a Nobel Laureate. It features some of his most famous work and cemented his reputation as one of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century.
The poems cover themes of life and the physical world, reality and myth, and love. They include the titular “The Tower,” inspired by the fifteenth-century Norman tower-house Yeats purchased, restored, and inhabited in County Galway, Ireland. Also in the collection are “Among School Children,” “Leda and the Swan,” and “Sailing to Byzantium.”
“Mr. Yeats has never written more exactly and more passionately.” —Virginia Woolf
“Yeats has not brought his poetry down; he has raised man up.” —The New York TimesW. 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.
Read more from W. B. Yeats
The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5W. B. Yeats – The Complete Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIrish Fairy Tales and Folklore Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret Rose: “There is another world, but it is in this one.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Poetry of William Butler Yeats Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Essays On Art: "All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wild Swans At Coole & Other Poems: “What can be explained is not poetry.” Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Changelings: Or, Beware Baby Snatchers of the Fairy Kingdom: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Irish Fairy and Folk Tales (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wild Swans at Coole Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIrish Fairy and Folk Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Hawk's Well Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King's Threshold: “Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPer Amica Silentia Lunae Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMichael Robartes and The Dancer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFairy Tales of Ireland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBest-Loved Yeats Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The W.B. Yeats Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeirdre Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Celtic Twilight Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Celtic Twilight Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Tower
Related ebooks
Behind the Arras: A Book of the Unseen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSongs of the Prairie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWestern Star Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsH.P. Lovecraft: Complete Poetry (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry Of HP Lovecraft: "Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems, 1908-1919 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Roadside Harp: A Book of Verses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSongs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMichael Robartes and The Dancer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRhymes à la Mode Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpirits in Bondage Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Elegies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson – Volume V Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEast and West: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEast and West Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMerchants from Cathay: 'Overhead a bleak and sinful sky'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Rhyme A Dozen - 12 Poets, 12 Poems, 1 Topic ― Churchyards Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poems of Schiller — Suppressed poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Moon Endureth: Tales and Fancies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Endymion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBirds of Passage: "The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius with some other poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSongs from Vagabondia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarmion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrchard and Vineyard Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Lonely Flute Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun and Her Flowers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLove Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pretty Boys Are Poisonous: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Everything Writing Poetry Book: A Practical Guide To Style, Structure, Form, And Expression Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Tower
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Tower - W. B. Yeats
SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
I
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 unaging 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 gold-smiths 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.
1927
THE TOWER
I
What shall I do with this absurdity—
O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog’s tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible—
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben’s back
And had the livelong summer day to spend.
It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,
Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
Until imagination, ear and eye,
Can be content with argument and deal
In abstract things; or be derided by
A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
II
I pace upon the battlements and stare
On the foundations of a house, or where
Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;
And send imagination forth
Under the day’s declining beam, and call
Images and memories
From ruin or from ancient trees,
For I would ask a question of them all.
Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once
When every silver candlestick or sconce
Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine,
A serving man that could divine
That most respected lady’s every wish,
Ran and with the garden shears
Clipped an insolent farmer’s ears
And brought them in a little covered dish.
Some few remembered still when I was young
A peasant girl commended by a song,
Who’d lived somewhere upon that rocky place,
And praised the colour of her face,
And had the greater joy in praising her,
Remembering that, if walked she there,
Farmers jostled at the fair
So great a glory