Few have lived their ideas so passionately and nobly as W.B. Yeats in his love affairs, politics and poetry. From his youth in the 1880s, a fertile dreamer rediscovering and remaking the Irish tradition, he grew into a great and innovative poet of the twentieth century.

This selection includes the final book from the unjustly neglected narrative poem “The Wanderings of Oisin” and a number of lyrics from Yeats’s work as poetic dramatist. This edition breaks new ground in presenting alternative versions of a dozen poems and a number of significant variants. It also includes explanatory and textual notes for each poem.