In The Seven Woods

Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age

by W. B. Yeats

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Pages: 55

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About this book

Birdsong, garden bees and a moment of quiet open this collection by W. B. Yeats, before the poems turn toward Ireland's heroic legends. Queen Maeve paces through her bronze-walled house at Cruachan while everyone around her sleeps. A strange call interrupts the stillness, and the old queen finds herself drawn into the concerns of supernatural beings. Elsewhere, Baile and Aillinn bring love and separation into the landscape of reeds, birds and wind.

The book also includes dramatic dialogue involving Cuchullain, with stories of shape-changing queens, strange weapons and a bridge that resists unwelcome travellers. Fintain's eagerness to tell these wonders meets Barach's more immediate concern about dinner, giving the legendary world a comic, everyday edge. Readers interested in Irish folklore can follow how Yeats places ordinary desires beside heroic figures, and how his verse connects the natural world with memory, age and love.

About the author

W. B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865 to 1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist, a driving force of the Irish Literary Revival and a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 and is counted among the foremost figures of twentieth-century poetry.