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“Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats (1926)
Yeats’s landmark poem, published nearly a decade after “The Wild Swans at Coole” echoes the anxieties of that poem and develops the idea of the power of art. The poem provides Yeats’s summary insight into the unsettling reality of time, the constant pressure of death, and the consolation offered to the artist by the artifacts they create.
“An Old Man’s Winter Night” by Robert Frost (1916)
A poet often compared to Yeats, Frost here offers his own melancholy meditation on aging. Like Yeats, Frost uses nature, specifically a night blizzard, to suggest an energy that defies humanity’s inevitable surrender to time. Nature, after all, recovers from its winters.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1819)
A poet Yeats much admired and a poem he much discussed, this ode is a contemplation of the power of art to freeze moments and preserve them in a unique kind of forever. Sculpted in careful prosody that Yeats appreciated, the poem reassures humanity struggling in time that art is forever.
By William Butler Yeats
Among School Children
Among School Children
William Butler Yeats
A Prayer for My Daughter
A Prayer for My Daughter
William Butler Yeats
A Vision
A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka
William Butler Yeats
Cathleen Ni Houlihan
Cathleen Ni Houlihan
William Butler Yeats
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
William Butler Yeats
Death
Death
William Butler Yeats
Easter, 1916
Easter, 1916
William Butler Yeats
Leda and the Swan
Leda and the Swan
William Butler Yeats
No Second Troy
No Second Troy
William Butler Yeats
Sailing to Byzantium
Sailing to Byzantium
William Butler Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
William Butler Yeats
The Second Coming
The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
When You Are Old
When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats