Selected Poems

As well as being one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century and the recipient of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature, William Butler Yeats (1865- 1939) is the greatest lyric poet that Ireland has produced.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover.

From Yeats’s early work comes some of his most famous and beguiling poems including ’The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ and ’The Stolen Child’. Enjoying success throughout the entirety of his career, The Tower was an immediate bestseller when first published in 1928, featuring ’Leda and the Swan’ and ’Among School Children’.

Spanning two centuries, there’s much to treasure in this selection of verse. This edition features an illuminating introduction by author and academic Dr Robert Mighall.

William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 in County Dublin. With his much-loved early poems such as ’The Stolen Child’, and ’He Remembers Forgotten Beauty’, he defined the Celtic Twilight mood of the late-Victorian period and led the Irish Literary Renaissance. Yet his style evolved constantly, and he is acknowledged as a major figure in literary modernism and twentieth-century European letters. T. S. Eliot described him as ’one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them’. W. B. Yeats died in 1939.