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2015-5

William Butler Yeats: Nationalism, Mythology, and

the New Irish Tradition
Samuel N. Welch IV

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Welch, Samuel N. IV, "William Butler Yeats: Nationalism, Mythology, and the New Irish Tradition" (2015). Honors Theses. 63.
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS: NATIONALISM, MYTHOLOGY,

AND THE NEW IRISH TRADITION

Honors Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of Bachelor of English

In the College of Arts and Sciences

at Salem State University

By

Samuel N. Welch IV

Dr. Richard Elia

Faculty Advisor
Department of English

***

Commonwealth Honors Program

Salem State University
2015
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Table of Contents

Page
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………...ii
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………….iii
The Purpose and Methods of Yeats……………………………………………………………..1
Finding a Voice: The Wanderings of Oisin and The Rose………………………………………3
The Search for Ireland: The Wind Among the Reeds……………………………………………9
The Later Years: To a Wealthy Man . . . and Under Ben Bulben……………………………….12
Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………..16
Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………..17
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Acknowledgements

I would firstly like to express my sincerest thanks to Dr. Richard Elia of the Salem State
University English department for all of the encouragement and guidance he has given me
towards completing this project. I would also like to give my thanks to him for being my
professor through a number of courses at SSU, where he helped my love of literature to grow and
prosper, and where he instilled in me a sense of the importance of classical literature in the
everyday life.

I would also like to thank Dr. Joanna Gonsalves, who as coordinator of the Honors Program at
SSU has given me a tremendous amount of support during my undergraduate career.

Finally, I would thank the numerous people in my everyday life who have supported me in my
undergraduate journey, as well as in my adventure into writing this paper. They are too
numerous to mention individually, but I offer them my thanks and hope that I will continue to
receive such wonderful support in the years to come.
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Abstract

William Butler Yeats has been regarded as one of the most important poets of the modern
era. His poetry is known throughout the world for its attention to form, masterful imagery, and
its distinctly Irish nature. Always a patriot, much of Yeats’ life was devoted to the resurrection of
Irish culture in what he hoped would be a Celtic Renaissance free from the heavily political
implications of the Irish nationalist movement of his time. This essay seeks to discuss and
understand Yeats’ methods and inspirations behind conveying his nationalism and love of Irish
lore through his poetry, especially in his earlier years of publication. He was concerned not just
with people’s knowledge of Ireland and her storied past, but also with the cultural wellbeing of
Ireland’s future, especially when it came to fostering future Irish artists and creative types. This
essay examines seven works by Yeats organized into three sections, each individual section
representing a different point in his creative journey towards finding his voice for Ireland’s
future writers and artists. His hope was to foster the creation of a literary tradition that was Irish
in its roots for the entertainment, advancement, and representation of a thoroughly Irish people.
This paper seeks to discover how exactly he went about attempting to create such a tradition.
 1

The Purpose and Methods of Yeats

William Butler Yeats has been regarded by many as one of the last, if not truly the

absolute last, of the Romantic poets. He was an heir to their sense of folk-art, their appreciation

of ancient customs, and the awesome power of the mysticism of the natural world; but, above all,

he most fully encapsulated the Romantic sense of nationalism. Yeats was an Irishman above all

else, and unrepentantly proud of his heritage. As such, Yeats often took up the banner of Ireland

in his poetry, weaving great tales and images of Irish heroes of old and the days before the

outside world made its landing on Irish shores. He sought to capture the character of ancient

Ireland and instill his love and inspiration into the hearts of his readers. His use of simpler

language and clear imagery, combined with the lyrical traditions of his motherland, was intended

to be readily understood by not just the upper-class and well-educated, but also by the layman

and most importantly the future generations of Ireland. Utilizing Irish myth and a palpable sense

of pride, Yeats set out from his early years as a writer to change Ireland for the better in the years

yet to arrive.

Perhaps the most defining characteristic of Yeats’ poetry was his longing for Ireland to

turn inwards artistically. He wanted his fellows to forgo telling more stories about those same

foreign heroes that have been told time and time again across Europe, such as Odysseus,

Hercules, King Arthur, Roland, or Aeneas, . Instead, he wants Irish literature for Ireland. He

states in a letter to Katharine Tynan that, “I feel more and more that we shall have a school of

Irish poetry – founded on Irish myth and history – a neo-romantic movement” (Wade, 33). To

this end he set about creating stories surrounding characters from old Irish mythology. But this

was not his only method; rather, Yeats’ poetry in general takes on a quite lyrical approach, being

highly structured and organized to represent the traditional Irish delivery of tales by a bard. He
 2

claimed, "Irish poetry and Irish stories were made to be spoken or sung, while English literature

has all but completely shaped itself in the printing press" (Thuente, 243). Yeats did not simply

want his poetry and the poetry of Irish origin to be read; instead, he wanted it to be heard, to be

sung and shouted out loud for all to hear in the old oral tradition of the island.

Yeats also wished to break away from any thickly-set connections to the English. He held

a strong distaste for how the English rule of Ireland had left Irish culture barren and desolate, a

shadow of its former self left behind in the wake of conquering English boots. As a young man

he visited England and found that he was displeased with what he saw there. He says in a letter

to Katharine Tynan that in London, “. . . you cannot go five paces without seeing some wretched

object broken either by wealth or poverty.” (Wade, 35). The industrial side of England stood in

stark contrast to much of the imagery he would use to describe the Ireland he loved and long for,

much of which was green and wild, Druidic with a sense of misty wonder about it. But more than

anything else he sought to break from English influence in order to give Ireland her sense of

power back. He said of his partnership with the Lady Augusta Gregory, “We work to add dignity

to Ireland” (“Autobiographies”, 456). He did not simply want Irish literature and culture to be

known again, he wanted it to be respected and hold its place alongside the other nations of the

world with its head held high. Yeats did not want the folklore and mythology of Ireland to be

regarded simply as idle folk stories of a long-since crumbled culture and tradition.

Yeats’ method of communicating his purpose in his poems was almost never directly

stated, and he often spoke through his numerous characters both born out of Irish myth and from

his own mind. In an essay on magic, he summarized his beliefs of the relationship between the

figures of the artist and the magician, whom he believed were closely intertwined. He said, “ . . .

all men, certainly all imaginative men, must be for ever casting forth enchantments, glamours,
 3

illusions . . .” (Ellmann, 90). Through figures like Oisin, Aengus, Michael Robartes, Owen

Aherne, and numerous others, Yeats delivered his beliefs to his audience discreetly so that they

would never feel lectured to, rather simply witnesses to a character’s state of mind. Oisin’s

sorrow over the loss of his people, Aengus’ search for his maiden, and Robartes and Aherne’s

debates all contributed differing perspectives on not only how Yeats viewed his world, but also

how he struggled within himself. Often times his narrator would be a nameless storyteller,

allowing him to gain his distance from his reader without betraying his purpose into the form of

a lecture. However, this often creates conflict within his own literature, as, “ . . . what he had

hoped to do, and increasingly succeeded in doing so, was to mold both occultism and

nationalism into his art. No sooner had he pulled himself into two parts and set them at odds than

he wanted to make peace between them . . .” (Ellmann, 115). Because he felt the urge to blend

both nationalism and mysticism into his art, he would need to seek a compromise between them.

Often he did, but even the Irish characters themselves seem to struggle with their sense of place

at times, and perhaps this is what gives much of Yeats’ poetry that great sense of longing that

endures through so much of his life’s work.

Finding a Voice: The Wanderings of Oisin and The Rose

Yeats’ first attempt at tackling the idea of Irish literature in the modern age was

manifested in his The Wanderings of Oisin (1889). This epic poem is, in many ways, similar to

Homer’s The Odyssey. Both tales center around a character who longs for home, is something of

a man out of time when he returns to his own country, and is a great intellectual figure. However,

Yeats does not go down the same path as many of his contemporaries would have by invoking

Odysseus himself, or the same Greek muses that Homer once did; rather, Yeats decides to

instead tell an Irish story about a great Irish hero. Yeats’ story is distinctly regional, though
 4

equally timeless. He says of folk literature that, "All folk literature, and all literature that keeps

the folk tradition, delights in unbounded and immortal things” (Thuente, 266). However, Yeats

was unhappy with this poem. Though it regaled to the reader the love between Oisin and Naemh,

the glory of the Fenians, and the timeless story of a culture and land lost by time, he felt that the

whole creation was, in the end, too unclear and esoteric. Initially he had intended the poem to be

unclear, so as to fill the hearts of his readers with romance and wonder. He said in a letter to

Kathrine Tynan, “In the second part of ‘Oisin’ under the guise of symbolism I had said several

things to which only I have the key. The romance is for my readers. They must not even know

there is a symbol anywhere. They will not find out. If they did it would spoil the art”, yet within

a week’s time of the poem’s publication, he wrote to Tynan again, this time declaring, “‘Oisin’

needs an interpreter” (Ellmann, 52). Thusly, Yeats would set out from this point onwards

towards a greater clarity of his purpose so that there would be no more confusion clouded by a

lust for esoteric imagery.

In 1893, Yeats published his collection of poetry dubbed The Rose. In this collection,

Yeats’ poetry took on his new clarity of purpose. As with his earlier works, these poems

displayed Yeats’ clear fascination with the mysticism of ancient times. This interest in the occult

had been fostered by an influential Theosophist of the time, Helena Blavatsky. She enthralled

Yeats with her fusion of a modern faith with a more ancient understanding of divinity. Her

teachings and appeal to the mystical were backed by the claim that “She had access, she said, to

an oral tradition, for the true and secret doctrine had never been allowed to disappear completely

even from a degenerate earth” (Ellmann 57). This fixation on the mystical and mythological is

clear in The Rose, which contains poems heavily drawing from stories of Cuchullain, Fergus,

faeries of all sorts, and a sense of a living Ireland. At the same time, though, Yeats’ sensibilities
 5

fell on the skeptical in the practical sense of these musings. He seemed to enjoy what they

brought to the table in terms of the grand history of the ancient world outside of the Greek,

Roman, and Anglican stories already permeating the world’s literature, but his true purpose was

never to convince you of the validity of the stories. It seemed as though "Yeats' attitude towards

the mystic quest is that of the lion-hunter who pauses before shooting to remind his attendants

that hunting is a dangerous and possibly foolish sport. But for all that occultism was his 'secret

fanaticism'” (Ellmann, 44). Beyond the occult, nationalism was Yeats’ favorite pastime, and

indeed a strong and pointed sense of nationalism pervades The Rose, but unlike The Wanderings

of Oisin, Yeats would not hide behind esotericism and clouded symbolism.

To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time opens up Yeats’ 1893 collection. The image of a

rose, as the title of the collection suggests, is a prominent one throughout the series. Yeats

remarked that, “the Rose is a favourite symbol with the Irish poets . . . in addresses to Ireland”

(Finneran, 478). The poem is an appeal to Ireland to listen to his words so that they may be

inspired by his tales. He calls upon the people of Ireland saying, “Red Rose, proud Rose, sad

Rose of all my days! / Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: / Cuchulain battling with the

bitter tide; / The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed” (1-4). There again the reader sees the

mystical qualities of the stories that are to come in the collection, yet they are direct in nature.

There is no question about the topics which the reader will find within, no grand symbol outside

of the Rose itself. Yeats at this point in his journey had become more concerned with his

message being understood than weaving some impressive image at the expense of his readers,

though he still wants them to feel the beauty and weight of the stories he feels himself. He

expresses this contradiction when he says, “Come near, come near, come near - Ah, leave me

still / A little space for the rose-breath to fill! / Lest I no more hear common things that crave”
 6

(13-15). He still seeks beauty and desires to bring it to the common people of Ireland so that they

may feel great again, but he is worried that if he becomes too enthralled by this aesthetic lust that

he will once more lose the clarity of his purpose. If he does not hold on to his love of common

things he will drift back to the overly-poetic. The poem also contains a great sense of urgency;

the narrator is convinced that he must spread his nationalistic love of Ireland quickly. In a

fashion common to Yeats’ poetry, his narrator takes on the sense that he has little time left to

teach Ireland of her rich and storied past, though Yeats himself was only twenty-eight years old

at the time of the publication of The Rose. He says, “Come near; I would, before my time to go, /

Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways” (22-23). Yeats clearly had a story to tell the people, and

he would tell it before his time was up.

The fusion of nationalism and Irish mystical history truly comes together in the final

poem of The Rose, which is titled To Ireland in Coming the Times. As the title suggests, the

poem is addressed to the Ireland of the future, quite possibly when he is already long gone. Yeats

begins the poem with the declaration, “Know, that I would accounted be / True brother of a

company / That sang, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong, / Ballad and story, rann and song” (1-4). As

with the poem that began The Rose, Yeats is making clear to his audience that he writes for

Ireland, for the people of Ireland, and for the continuation and advancement of their culture. He

speaks also of how the old Irish world still lives within him, and that, in fact, it is a present force

in everything he does. He claims, “For the elemental creatures go / About my table to and fro . . .

Man ever journeys on with them / After the red-rose-bordered hem. / Ah, faeries, dancing under

the moon, / A Druid land, a Druid tune!” (23-32). The imagery of elemental and Druidic figures

hearkens back to pre-Christian Ireland when the Druids held sway over the island and its people.

Yeats’ heart lies more firmly, he is implying, with the old stories of his motherland than with the
 7

old stories of the continental Europeans. The modern world is far more organized, more

structured than this past of natural beauty and individual freedom. Though he draws inspiration

from those foreign stories and obviously holds respect for them, he does not cherish them as

dearly as that Druid land and Druid tune that he mentions in the poem. The “red-rose-bordered

hem” Yeats mentioned is also clearly a further reference to the Rose that is Ireland. He believes

that these stories and these faery creatures still live in the hearts of the people, that the mysticism

of old Ireland has not left entirely. The poem closes with a heartfelt message to his reader about

his purpose in writing, as well as his hope that one day people will look back on his work and

know what he tried to do for Ireland. He says, “While still I may, I write for you / The love I

lived, the dream I knew . . . I cast my heart into my rhymes, / That you, in the dim coming times,

/ May know how my heart went with them / After the red-rose-bordered hem” (33-48). Though

To Ireland in the Coming Times is rich with imagery of the eternal nature of Ireland, her long

history, and the magical creatures that still flit between the minds of Yeats and his fellows, it is

first and foremost an attempt to draw the reader into a similar sort of nationalism. Through his

recognizable passion and knowledge of Ireland, Yeats’ appeal to his reader is both genuine and

clear.

The Rose was, in general, Yeats’ attempt to make his poetry relevant to the nationalist

movement in Ireland. In the poems that frame the collection, as well as the plainly Irish subject

matter of the middle pieces, Yeats blends his love of Ireland with what he believes it is to be

Irish. Nationalism in Ireland was a highly political movement at the time, and Yeats had always

sought to distance himself from such connections, further alienating himself from the movers and

shakers of the attempts at change. However, the revolutionary figure John O’Leary had given

Yeats his reasons behind his nationalism in these early years. O’Leary had a strong sense of what
 8

it was at the time to be, according to O’Leary himself, truly Irish. O’Leary believed that, “. . . he

should feel first of all that he was an Irishman; second, that Irish unity must be secured, and

finally, that he should make some sacrifice for Ireland. These simple, unpolitical precepts . . . had

considerable effect upon Yeats, who up to that time had thought of the nationalist movement as

an affair for politicians” (Ellmann 46). It is clear through Yeats’ poetry that his nationalist love

for Ireland was not purely political in nature, if even political at all. His focus more heavily

leaned towards the mystical aspects of Ireland: the stories, the songs, the folk-centered aspects of

his country rather than the modern problems plaguing the modern people. This love of folklore

was not necessarily shared by contemporary nationalists, though, and so The Rose holds an

important place in Yeats’ attempt to stir up a nationalist fervor among the artistic movements of

Ireland. Because he was not accepted in many more political circles during his time, he has been

described as “. . . a man in frenzy, beating on every door in the hotel in an attempt to find his

own room” (Ellmann, 70). Simply put, he was a man without a place. Nonetheless, he persevered

through this period, and he stuck closely to the teachings and ideas that O’Leary had instilled in

him in his younger years. He later wrote that about the influence of O’Leary and O’Leary’s

compatriots and the conversations they had together in his later years when he states, “these

debates, from O'Leary's conversation, or from the Irish books he lent or gave me has come all I

have set my hand to since.” (“Autobiographies”, 101). Yeats saw the unity of the Irish and a true

sense of Irishness only being able to be secured through a revival of the culture of Ireland from

its mystical, pre-Christian, pre-English roots. This is a sense that would only continue as he grew

as a poet, and he would seek to refine his technique as he went.

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The Search for Ireland: The Wind Among the Reeds

In 1899’s collection titled, The Wind Among the Reeds, Yeats found himself once again

utilizing the topic of the wandering hero. Much like The Wanderings of Oisin, The Song of

Wandering Aengus depicts a hero who is lost, searching for years for the source of his heart’s

passion. As before, Yeats chose a distinctly Irish character in Aengus, whom Yeats described as,

“The god of youth, beauty, and poetry . . .” (Finneran, 480). In this poem, Aengus meets a

beautiful young woman who he immediately falls in love with, vowing to search for her until the

end of his days when she flees from him. Appealing to Yeats’ sense of nationalism, the young

woman most probably represents Ireland in a physical sense: a beautiful, fleeting idea that Yeats

himself searched for in his numerous attempts at instilling a sense of Irishness into his art. The

first implication of this is in the fishing rod Aengus catches the mystical girl in being made out of

hazel. The first stanza of the poem says, “I went out to the hazel wood, / Because a fire was in

my head, / And cut and peeled a hazel wand” (1-3). Yeats would later explain this image in

greater detail, saying that, “The hazel tree was the Irish tree of Life or of Knowledge, and in

Ireland it was doubtless, as elsewhere, the tree of the heavens” (Finneran, 481). When the fish

Aengus catches turns into a beautiful young woman, the mystical aspects of the story flair to life,

and the implications of the greater symbolism of the girl become more apparent. Much like

Yeats, Aengus searches for this faerie woman for many long years, and in the poem he never

actually reunites with the lady. He says, “Though I am old with wandering / Through hollow

lands and hilly lands / I will find where she has gone . . . And pluck till time and times are done /

The silver apples of the moon, / The golden apples of the sun” (17-24). It is a poem about

longing, not one about a love that has been realized. Though Aengus feels the love for her in his

heart, it can never be fully realized until the young woman is in his arms; such is Yeats’ fervor
 10

for Ireland. Through the mask of Aengus, Yeats shows the reader the longing that he feels within

himself for a brighter future for Ireland. The symbolism of the golden apples is the implication of

eternity, an unending renaissance for Ireland once the people find her once again, and the silver

representing the malleability and brilliance of something yet unshaped. He loves Ireland, and

yearns for others to love her, but the love he feels cannot be reciprocated and returned in full

until Ireland has been allowed a revival of the past, of the glory days of their history and

heritage.

Following Romantic roots, Yeats continued his examination of Ireland as a beautiful

woman in another poem from the same collection, He Remembers forgotten Beauty. The woman

in the poem is most likely Yeats’ long-time love interest Maud Gonne, whom Yeats refers to

often in his poetry, especially where matters of Ireland’s long-lost beauty are concerned. A

member of the more militant branches of the nationalist movement, Maud Gonne represented for

Yeats the faerie beauty of Ireland that had fallen away in recent generations. His distaste with the

modern state of things in Ireland is apparent, as the opening lines of the poem are, “When my

arms wrap you round I press / My heart upon the loveliness / That has long faded from the

world” (1-3). He believed that Ireland had been left bereft of beauty, and so that was what made

Maud Gonne so attracting for him; she represented everything he loved about Ireland’s past. His

nationalist sentiments spring forward in the poem quite strongly when he continues in his

musings about Ireland’s past, especially referring to what has been done to the artifacts left over

from her long history. He says, “The love-tales wrought with silken thread / By dreaming ladies

upon cloth / That has made fat the murderous moth” (6-8). The “murderous moth” being referred

to here is most probably England, who made a point of leeching all resources, riches, and power

away from Ireland for so many generations, it would indeed be akin to a moth gnawing away at a
 11

woven tapestry. Yeats is implying here that though the tapestries of old Ireland remain, they are

in dire need of repair, hence why they cannot be so easily and readily recovered; England has

had its fill off of the Irishry. Yeats once more refers to Maud’s beauty, and in the same sense

Ireland’s former beauty, when he says, “Through many a sacred corridor / Where such grey

clouds of incense rose / That only God’s eyes did not close: / For that pale breast and lingering

hand / Come from a more dream-heavy land, / A more dream-heavy hour than this” (12-17).

Once more Yeats refers to the dreamlike qualities of Irish mysticism, filled with incense and holy

halls, saying once more that such beauties as Maud Gonne have not existed since ancient times

before Ireland was infringed upon. Yeats closes the poem by referring to “Beauty” as a

personified individual, saying that, “. . . when you sigh from kiss to kiss / I hear white Beauty

sighing, too . . . But flame on flame, and deep on deep, / Throne over throne where in half sleep,

/ Their swords upon their iron knees, / Brood her high lonely mysteries” (18-24). Here again

Yeats assumes the role of a masked individual. On the surface he is proclaiming his love for

Maud Gonne, yet on a deeper level he is talking about the mourning of the passage of a revered

figure, namely Ireland. Yeats wants Maud Gonne’s dream of a new Ireland to come true, as he

shares the same dream, though their means are far different. His image of Ireland as a personified

woman allows him to maintain a dignified image of her passing through the ages, as well as

properly convey the tragedy that he sees as befalling her.

During this time Yeats seemed to be primarily concerned with what Ireland could

become. His Romantic idea of referring to Ireland as a beautiful faerie woman was effective in

embodying what he saw her potential to be: perfection of form, a timeless beauty rooted in the

mysticisms of old. Ireland’s perfection was fleeting to him, and he did not feel as though he

could yet grasp it, though he searched for it for many, many years, as implied by The Song of
 12

Wandering Aengus. In many ways Aengus was simply Yeats himself, a romantic lover of ideas,

as well as people, who lusted after a woman in his dreams until he was old and weak, well past

the vibrant days of his youth. He has travelled through Ireland and seen what it has become, and

has become disparaged with what he knew his modern Ireland was like. However, he never gave

up hope for the future, and although both poems in The Wind Among the Reeds leave off on

uncertain notes, that uncertainty held a clarity of purpose behind it. Simply because Yeats did not

know if he would succeed did not mean that he would stop trying.

The Later Yeats: To a Wealthy Man . . . and Under Ben Bulben

Yeats’ To a Wealthy Man . . . (1914) echoed the younger Yeats’ enthusiastic nationalistic

sentiment, however it lacked one thing in particular: a distinct sense of Irishness. However, the

lack of Irish figures, whether mythological or historical, does little to take away the sense of

nationalism that Yeats builds in this poem. He has been yearning for a Celtic renaissance of

sorts, and so instead of calling on his more familiar images, he instead invokes the great patrons

of the Italian Renaissance to drive home his purpose. Written after a Lord Ardilaun decided to

withhold funds from the Dublin Municipal Gallery, as well as a number of other events he

disliked, Yeats channeled his frustration towards pointing out why, in his mind, such frugality

with regards to the arts would not allow for Ireland to grow. Yeats felt that these events would do

irreparable harm to the state of the display of the arts and artistry of Ireland, that there would be

no place to find artistic wisdom and grace if places like the Gallery did not receive proper

funding. He says, “These controversies, political, literary, and artistic, have showed that neither

religion nor politics can of itself create minds with enough receptivity to become wise, or just

and generous enough to make a nation.” (Finneran, 458). Yeats was, as always, quite concerned

with the artistic renaissance he wanted for Ireland. In To a Wealthy Man . . ., Yeats responds
 13

early to the refusal of funds to the arts. He says, “You gave but will not give again / Until enough

of Paudeen’s pence / By Biddy’s halfpennies have lain / To be ‘some sort of evidence,’ / Before

you’ll put your guineas down” (1-5). He alludes to the Lord Ardilaun seeking the opinion of the

lower-class folk and the philistines, who would obviously not seek to spend their funds on art

when their livelihoods are more directly at stake on a day-to-day basis. Yeats continues by

naming off a number of famed artistic patrons and creators, all of whom were known for their

incredible contributions to culture and learning, who did not ask for the opinion of the common

folk. He names Duke Ercole of Ferrara of Castiglione’s The Courtier for his comedies, Duke

Guidobaldo di Montefeltro of Urbino for his schools of grammar and courtesy, and Cosimo de’

Medici for funding the National Library of St Mark’s (Finneran, 485-486). Although even these

named people’s native Italy was in dire conflict, Yeats argued that in the long-term their

contributions were of great weight because they gave the people a place to “Delight in Art whose

end is peace, / In logic and in natural law” (26-27). Yeats’ pleas in this poem are a testament to

his nationalistic fervor. He wants the revolution of Irish culture to happen in people’s minds and

artistic inspiration rather than in violence in the streets and political debates. He says that in

order for this Celtic renaissance to be accomplished, one must, “Look up in the sun’s eye and

give / What the exultant heart calls good / That some new day may breed the best / Because you

gave, not what they would / But the right twigs for an eagle’s nest!” (32-36). Yeats is suggesting

that, with regards to art, it is better to build for the future even though there will be minimal

immediate returns than to forgo the expense and as a result be left completely artistically

destitute when times are better and people yearn for culture and a sense of place.

Published in the New Poems collection in 1938, Under Ben Bulben was one of the last

poems ever published by Yeats, and it serves as a sort of epigraph to his ideals he had put forth
 14

over the years. He contemplates the impermanence of life itself, yet he also considers what can

endure through art and the responsibilities one has within art. In the fourth part of Under Ben

Bulben, Yeats directly addresses the modern Irish poet, drawing a path from Michelangelo to

what he sees, as always, as a present that does not live up to his standards. He says, “Michael

Angelo left a proof / On the Sistine Chapel roof, / Where but half-awakened Adam / Can disturb

globe-trotting Madam / ‘Till her bowels are in heat” (45-49). According to Yeats, in the older

days of the Italian Renaissance art had tremendous power, and those who practiced their craft

had such force because they made art for the people, to show them a purpose. However, Yeats

does not believe that to be the case anymore. He claims, “Gyres run on; / When that greater

dream had gone / Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude / Prepared a rest for the people of God, /

Palmer’s phrase, but after that / Confusion fell upon our thought” (62-67). This confusion, Yeats

implies, is what has resulting in a lack of ability on the part of his people to create for themselves

another Renaissance. But he does not believe that the future is without hope. In Under Ben

Bulben Yeats gives one further plea to the artists of the future, specifically those of Irish origin,

so that they may bring about that Celtic Renaissance. He says, “Irish poets learn your trade / Sing

whatever is well made, / Scorn the sort now growing up . All out of shape from toe to top, / Their

unremembering hearts and heads / Base-born products of base beds” (68-73). Yeats urges the

future poets of Ireland to find the same passion he did in older, more Irish ways, to embody the

nationalistic sentiment in their art rather than trying to reshape the Irish to conform to a more

English norm. Yeats wishes for Irish literature to become rooted in the island’s past, and so he

begs his reader to learn the Irish songs as he did, and retell the old stories. He urges, “Cast your

mind on other days / That we in coming days may be / Still the indomitable Irishry” (81-83).

Yeats clearly believed that if he could urge but a few Irish poets to embody the same love for
 15

Ireland that he felt, that his dream of a new Irish literary and cultural movement would take place

at last.

In his later years, Yeats was still concerned with what Ireland could become, and his own

purpose had not been dulled; yet, his new focus seemed to be one what Ireland was at the time,

and the disappointment that this knowledge brought Yeats. Though hopeful as always, Yeats was

obviously distressed by the way the members of the Irish population who had money and

influence were spending their funds and energy. He wanted investments into Ireland’s cultural

and artistic future, not towards more political or temporary gains. He clearly thought that the

Irish sense of art was degrading, and had been degrading for quite some time. This seemed to be

the focal point in these later years: the idea of the Celtic Renaissance that he had mused on for so

long. This, he thought in the aforementioned poems, was the solution to stirring up a new and

energetic nationalism in the hearts and minds of the common people and the upper classes alike.

These methods would be the way that a new Irish literature would arise.

Conclusions

By maintaining his devotion to beauty and to the ideas of a new Irish literature while

abandoning much of the excess romanticism that would have mired his work in abstract

symbolism and esoterics, Yeats was able to present a clear and vivid image of what he believed

Irish literature and culture should become. His attention to form and style, along with his ability

to parallel many of the great Irish heroes alongside more well-known myths of the time helped to

familiarize his audience with the Ireland of old, the Druidic Ireland when the English held no

sway over the island. He set out to establish a collection of Irish poetry that was based in Ireland,

made for the Irish themselves, and he accomplished that goal. With a broad spectrum of figures

and topics giving Yeats a wellspring of inspiration and knowledge, his sense of nationalism
 16

blended perfectly with his imagery of a bygone era. He was the heir to the Romantic tradition,

but he did not stick too closely to his Romantic sensibilities, instead seeking a more practical

approach, and in the end this is what truly let his messages shine through.
 17

Works Cited

Ellmann, Richard. Yeats: The Man and the Masks. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1958. Print.

Finneran, Richard J., ed. The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. 2nd ed. New York: Scribner
Paperback Poetry, 1996. Print.

Thuente, Mary Helen. W.B. Yeats and Irish Folklore. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan Ltd, 1980.
Print.

Wade, Allan, ed. The Letters of W. B. Yeats. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954. Print.

Yeats, W. B. Autobiographies. London: Macmillan, 1956. Print.

Yeats, W.B. “He remembers forgotten Beauty.” Finneran 62-63.

Yeats, W.B. “The Song of Wandering Aengus.” Finneran 59-60.

Yeats, W.B. “The Wanderings of Oisin.” Finneran 355-386.

Yeats, W.B. “To a Wealthy Man who promised a second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal
Gallery if it were proved the People wanted Pictures.” Finneran 107-108.

Yeats, W.B. “To Ireland in the Coming Times.” Finneran 50-51.

Yeats, W.B. “To the Rose upon the Rood of Time.” Finneran 31.

Yeats, W.B. “Under Ben Bulben.” Finneran 325-328.