William Butler Yeats

The theme is one of (unwanted and regrettably) inevitable change over time toward old age. Yet another theme runs parallel to that of the changes of time and that theme is concerned with the...

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...

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,...

Ballads tell a story in rhyme, and in "The Ballad of Father Gilligan," Yeats's speaker relates the story of how on one particular evening, God showed mercy on both a tired old priest and a man at...

Father Gilligan is a parish priest living and working deep in the Irish countryside. He is a dedicated man, assiduously ministering to his parish, despite the fact that his parishioners keep dying...

Father Gilligan in the ballad by Yeats, "The Ballad of Father Gilligan," is tired because his people are dying off so fast. His job is to go to them, comfort them, and give them last rites when...

"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...

One of the connections that exists between the real world and the world of the fairies in Yeats's "Stolen Child" is the pain and suffering that makes leaving it quite inviting. The real world and...

"The Mask" is comprised of alternating lines between 2 speakers. One speaker hides behind a mask, and the other speaker wants her to show her true identity (we'll assume she's a woman for this...

Yeats published "Down By The Salley Gardens," a poem based on an Irish folk song, in a collection called Crossways in 1890. Although some readers have tried to locate the "Salley" gardens, the...

This section of the poem comes in the final stanza, as Father Gilligan kneels to worship his God who has helped him so much by allowing one of his parishioners to die in peace without the need for...

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...

Both of Yeats's poems use nature as the vehicle for expressing sentiment, and each poem has its own message. In "The Lake at Innisfree" the speaker projects himself, in great detail, to a bucolic...

Here's the context of the line you ask about from "The Ballad of Father Gilligan," by Yeats. The old priest Peter GilliganWas weary night and day;For half his flock were in their beds,Or under...

Put simply, "The Gyres" is about an old man on the verge of death, as he reflects on his existence and the destruction of civilization around him. However, the poem is a bit more complicated than...

Yeats's work moves in two directions, in a way. Much of what he says in his poetry is very Romantic. "The Wild Swans at Coole" represents this well. In the poem, he paints a vivid nature scene and...

In the Yeats poem, "The Ballad of Father Gilligan," the fact that half of his flock, half of his parishioners, are lying under green sod is responsible for the priest's exhausted state. The green...

"The Wild Swans of Coole" and "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" both celebrate the beauty and peace of nature. Both are simple poems that use imagery—what we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell—to...

In most areas of the world, there are moths. A lot of the moths that people see come out around early evening. So when the poor man sends for Father Gilligan, it is early evening. Most of the...

Here's the first four stanzas of "The Ballad of Father Gilligan," by Yeats. They include the details you refer to: The old priest Peter GilliganWas weary night and day;For half his flock were in...

Here are paragraphs six and seven from "The Ballad of Father Gilligan," by Yeats: Upon the time of sparrow-chirpWhen the moths came once more.The old priest Peter GilliganStood upright on the...

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...

Yeats is a very interesting poet to study and write about in terms of modernism, as his poetry writing career spanned a lifetime and also spanned the changing mood moving away from romantic lyrical...

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 (“He”),...

The following link summarizes it best. However, in short, it is about an old man who waits for the waters to flow freely in a well that offers water that gives immortality to those who drink it....

Yeats' The Land of Heart's Desire demonstrates his abiding fascination with Irish folktales and ancient Celtic mythology. He regards the twilight world of fairies, banshees, and ghosts as providing...

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 duty...

The Modernism literary movement was heavily influenced by 20th century atrocities, such as world wars I and II. These wars left the world "shell-shocked" and cynical and asking the question, what...

A traditional folk ballad is usually told in a direct or dramatic manner with a specific form: quatrains (four-line stanzas) the lines alternate between four stresses and three stresses the second...

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...

Yeats's "Words" comes from his 1910 collection, The Green Helmet and Other Poems, which marks a departure from his earlier works. At the time of writing, Yeats's great love, Maude Gonne, had...

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...

Here's the context of the line you're having trouble with, from "The Ballad of Father Gilligan," by Yeats: He knelt, and leaning on the chairHe prayed and fell asleep;And the moth-hour went from...

Yeats "On a Political Prisoner" was published in 1920, but written in between January 10 and January 29, 1919, a volatile period in which the Irish nationalist party won a massive electoral victory...

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,...

There are several ways to discuss W. B. (William Butler) Yeats as a modern poet. There are also a few ways to argue against presenting Yeats as a modern poet. Let’s start with why Yeats might be...

Apart from their both dealing with swans, in my view these two poems on first reading have little in common. "Leda and the Swan" is a sonnet based on the incident in Greek mythology in which Zeus...

William Butler Yeats's "Meru" is a Shakespearean sonnet, though it is structured and laid out like a Petrarchan sonnet, with a break between the octave and a sestet. The octave makes a general...

In his poem “Broken Dreams,” W. B. Yeats deals with such standard poetic topics as desire, change, memories, the afterlife, the passing of time, and a woman’s beauty. Yet of course, like all...

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...

The details you need to answer your question are in the second and third stanzas of the poem. Here's the first four stanzas, to give you the full context, of "The Ballad of Father Gilligan," by...

William Butler Yeats' "The Cradle Song," is a lovely poem, written with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEF, in a total of twelve lines. (Every other line rhymes: so A represents one sound and that...

In "The Ballad Of Father Gilligan" by William Butler Yeats, the style of a "Symbolist" poet with his use of "allusive imagery and symbolic structures." In essence, Yeats wrote poems that suggested...

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...

"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...

Yeats's "Byzantium" was written some years after "Sailing to Byzantium" in an attempt to clarify the earlier poem. While "Sailing to Byzantium" uses allusions (such as to the sages) to give the...

Father Gilligan finds that he has slept through the night and failed in his duty to one of his flock that had sent for him the night before. Here's paragraphs six and seven from "The Ballad of...

I think this excellent poem presents us with a priest who is at the end of his tether and absolutely exhausted. It appears that the cause of his intense spritual and physical weariness is the fact...

W. B. (William Butler) Yeats was a prolific twentieth-century Irish poet who wrote a wide range of poetry during his literary career. For example, in “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” Yeats relies on...

As we are limited in space, below are a few ideas to help get you started.The symbolism of the fisherman referred to in William Butler Yeats's poem "The Fisherman" becomes evident in the first...