Lapis Lazuli (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: William Butler Yeats
- First Published: 1938
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: History, Art or artists, Death or dying, Tragedy, Life, philosophy of, Sculpting or sculptors, China or Chinese people, Shakespeare, William, or Shakespearean plays, Sculpture
The Poem
This fifty-six-line poem is dedicated to Harry Clifton, who gave to William Butler Yeats on his seventieth birthday an eighteenth century Chinese carving in lapis lazuli, an azure-blue semiprecious stone. It was a traditional scene representing a mountain with temple, trees, paths, and tiny human beings about to climb the mountain. Yeats uses the carving to meditate on the role of art in an essentially tragic world.
The poem begins by acknowledging certain complaints from “hysterical women” who say that they “are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,/ Of...
[The entire page is 1536 words long]
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