Poetry Guide: William Butler Yeats

His symbolic poetry distinguishes W. B. Yeats. He continued to use his highly allusive imagery and symbolic structures in almost all his poems, all through his writing career.

Another significant aspect of his writing was the diction he used. His selection of words was so precise that besides being meaningful, they suggest other abstract thoughts which do happen to be more significant and resonant. Due to his allusive use of symbols and emphatic diction, his poems gain timeless qualities.

Yeats mostly applied traditional verse forms to his poems, unlike the other modernists who often experimented with free verse.

In the last twenty years of his life, his poetry and plays began to add a kind of personal vein. His experience of growing old often found place in his writings.

In the present book you will find the summary and analysis of five of his best poems. These summaries and analyses have been written to assist the students of English poetry and English Literature.

All the best

Raja Sharma