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William Butler Yeats
This poem concerns a female Irish nationalist who has been thrown into prison for her part in protesting the rule of Ireland from mainland Britain. It is generally believed that the subject of the...
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William Butler Yeats
Yeats' "A Coat" is an autobiographical poem in which Yeats reflects upon his poetry. In the opening line he says that "I made my song a coat." The song he refers to represents his poetry, and the...
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William Butler Yeats
Yeats's play, The Pot of Broth, (which he wrote was composed with the help of Lady Gregory) is a retelling of the old European folk tale often known as "stone soup." There are also Chinese and...
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William Butler Yeats
The poem “The Mask,” by William Butler Yeats comes from his collection of poems called "The Green Helmet and other Poems." "The Mask" is about a conversation between a woman and a man. At the...
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William Butler Yeats
In this poem, Yeats describes a priest who is exhausted because his parishioners "die and die," and thus he has "no rest, nor joy, nor peace." The priest falls asleep one night after being called...
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William Butler Yeats
In “The Ballad of Father Gilligan,” Irish poet William Butler Yeats tells the tale of a tired and aged priest, Father Gilligan, who is sleep-deprived and can barely keep up with the all-hours...
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William Butler Yeats
It depends upon what you mean by "modern author" versus "modernist." A modernist is part of the modernist movement, which lasted throughout the first half of the twentieth century. By "modern...
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William Butler Yeats
In the seventh stanza, Father Gilligan expresses his consternation at realizing that he fell asleep on a chair while the sick man he was supposed to visit died. "Mavrone, mavrone!" he exclaims,...
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William Butler Yeats
A) The following are some ideas on a comparison of “When You Are Old” (by William Butler Yeats) and “Do not go gentle into that good night” (by Dylan Thomas): 1. Both poems employ end...
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William Butler Yeats
The theme of the poem is a common one in Yeats's late work: facing up to the harsh realities of growing old. The old man of the poem looks back wistfully to his younger days, when he was loved by...
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William Butler Yeats
I'm terribly sorry but William Butler Yeats is 'bigging himself up' here. Whilst I love most of his poetry, poems in which he puts himself above other suitors of Maud's really wind me up. Maud had...
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William Butler Yeats
The two central themes of the poem "The Ballad of Father Gilligan" are the tremendous stresses a priest must face in Ireland during the Great Potato Famine, and the omnipresent help of a loving...
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William Butler Yeats
In Yeats's poem "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," the Irish pilot who narrates the poem expresses feelings of Irish nationalism. He says, "Those that I fight I do not hate / Those that I guard...
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William Butler Yeats
In order to compare and contrast William Butler Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (to be known as LII) and "The Wild Swans at Coole" (to be known as WSC) rhyme, meter, poetic devices, and meaning...
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William Butler Yeats
There are several literary devices employed in Yeats's poem, but one theme that he often employs is that of the journey of life. This journey is presented in spiral imagery that explores the human...
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William Butler Yeats
This play by Yeats is closely linked to his love of his Irish homeland and the various myths and legends that circulate there concerning faeries and a kind of faeryland where humans were tempted to...
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William Butler Yeats
Critics say Yeats early poetry reflected his admiration of Edmund Spenser and the Romantic period poets. It was later that he realized his poetry needed realism to accompany the Irish mythology,...
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William Butler Yeats
What is referred to in this poem as the "flock" is the people who lived in Father Gilligan's area. They are the people for whom he, as a priest, is responsible. The idea is that he is their...
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William Butler Yeats
Yeats is one of my favorite poets! Does your assignment allow you to choose any poems? I am assuming you have to tailor your thesis statement to discuss these three works. I think you could...
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William Butler Yeats
"An Acre of Grass" is a confessional-style poem, appearing in Yeats' last published collection, Last Poems. I would definitely not classify "An Acre of Grass" as a desired picture of old age; in...
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William Butler Yeats
There are a number of themes apparent in this haunting, romantic poem. First, there is a sense that nature possesses mystical and healing powers, and that being in nature can cause true believers...
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William Butler Yeats
I think that William Butler Yeats is both a realistic and an idealistic poet who conveyed his ideas of history as well as his ideas of what the future portends for humankind to make his significant...
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William Butler Yeats
All poetry essentially uses symbols to encapsulate and condense universal truths into a concise observation. The entire Jungian approach to psychology/anthropology is based on a universal...
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William Butler Yeats
Yeats starts his famous poem "The Second Coming" with the image of a falcon turning about in the sky, far away from the falconer who released it. The falcon continues to turn and turn further away...
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William Butler Yeats
The poem "The Cat and The Moon" was originally written by Yeats as part of a play, first produced in 1917. The first two quatrains of the poem open the play, the second two quatrains appear a short...
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William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats's poem "The Stolen Child" is structured into four stanzas with a basic ABAB CDCD EFEF and so on rhyme scheme. Each of the first three stanzas ends with an invitation to the...
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William Butler Yeats
"When You are Old" by William Butler Yeats is an exquisite poem, in part because of its meaning, but also because of the sound created by its perfect rhyme scheme. The scheme is ABBA, CDDC, EFFE....
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William Butler Yeats
"The Green Helmet" by William Butler Yeats is not a play, but a collection of poetry. It was written after his collection "In the Seven Woods", and is a continuation of that...
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William Butler Yeats
"The Stolen Child" by Yeats is a narrative poem, infused with the sense of the otherworldly, that moves in a progression of introducing the setting, creating the action, furthering the action, and...
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William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats, a much read and loved Irish poet even today, is considered by many as one of the finest poets of the 20th century. His contributions to English poetical traditions are many,...
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William Butler Yeats
"Adam's Curse" by William Butler Yeats, waxes philosophical regarding what they perceive as Adam's curse, which is "work." (A great deal of detail is to be found in eNotes' "Masterpiece II...
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William Butler Yeats
There is little explanation of why Yeats is so hungry for peace in his famous poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Rather, Yeats spends most of the poem describing the pastoral beauty and idyllic...
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William Butler Yeats
In this poem, the main character, Father Peter Gilligan, asks God to forgive him because he has spoken words that are unworthy of a priest. When Father Gilligan heard that someone else needed his...
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William Butler Yeats
The narrator of "The Gyres" is detachedly observing a world in flames, having destroyed its "ancient lineaments," succumbing to war and destruction while he (the narrator) asks himself if it really...
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William Butler Yeats
I think that it is important to view the life of a poet in a context, but not use it to draw too great of a portrait of the artist in relationship to their work. In terms of Yeats' relationship...
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William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats's "The Stolen Child" is a poem that combines Irish mythology, mystery and romanticism as it pertains to childhood, and in juxtaposition with the modern world. This being said,...
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William Butler Yeats
I would say that the theme of the poem is the idea that God cares about the least members of his creation. In the Bible it talks about how God knows if even one sparrow dies. This poem's theme is...
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William Butler Yeats
The "old pensioner" has been changed by the passage of time. He may no longer be actively involved in "every company that talked of love or politics"; he no longer joins in the fights with weapons...
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William Butler Yeats
This is a very broad question, really too broad for an enotes answer. Yeats wrote hundreds of poems in the course of a very long working life and his methods and techniques varied not just as he...
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William Butler Yeats
There are many romantic elements in the poetry of W.B. Yeats - many of this poet's most beautiful and lyrical poems were written early on in his career. a good one to look at is "The Lake Isle Of...
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William Butler Yeats
Although Yeats’ “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” is a very brief poem, it is also imaginatively rich and literally colorful. While the title describes the speaker in the third person...
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William Butler Yeats
Father Gilligan grieves at the beginning of the poem because he is old, tired, and overworked. He has, it seems, had a long and tiring day. But instead of being able to relax, he gets summoned by...
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William Butler Yeats
The character sketch of Peter Gilligan from the poem “The Ballad of Father Gilligan” by William Butler Yeats includes the following: Father Peter Gilligan is elderly. He is always weary and is...
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William Butler Yeats
"The Ballad of Father Gilligan" concerns an extremely humble and pious priest who is exhausted from trying to care for all of his flock and meeting their needs. In particular, he seems preoccupied...
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William Butler Yeats
Yeats' poem "The Second Coming" is a description of the state of the world following World War I using apocalyptic imagery. The poem is filled with images of chaos, pessimism, and loss of faith....
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William Butler Yeats
In this poem before the stanzas you cite, Father Gilligan has been called to the bedside of a man who is dying. But the priest is very tired. He kneels to pray and falls asleep right there on his...
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William Butler Yeats
In this poem, I believe that Father Gilligan is tired both in his emotions and as a physical thing. This is because half of the people in his "flock" are asleep and half of them are dead. So what...
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William Butler Yeats
Some of the symbolism used by William Butler Yeats in the poem 'The Second Coming' relates back to the ideas of stability and instability. For example, the poet uses the words 'widening gyre.' Here...
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William Butler Yeats
One poem in which the Anglo-Irish poet W.B. Yeats uses mythology (in this case the old myths of Ireland) is the beautiful 'Song of Wandering Aengus.' Aengus was a god-like being who became...
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William Butler Yeats
In "An Acre of Grass," Yeats' speaker is an old man who believes that books are his "acre of grass." Because he is an old man, he can no longer run around outside to keep fit; his "strength of...