A Study Guide for William Butler Yeats's "Leda and the Swan," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

Table of contents

The Wild Swans at Coole by William Butler Yeats, first published in 1919, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

Compilation of all the poems from The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) and Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) includes "The Second Coming," "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," many others.

Beautiful early writings by one of the 20th century’s greatest poets on the 150th anniversary of his birth A Penguin Classic The poems, prose, and drama gathered in When You Are Old present a fresh portrait of the Nobel Prize–winning writer as a younger man: the 1890s aesthete who dressed as a dandy, collected Irish folklore, dabbled in magic, and wrote heartrending poems for his beloved, the beautiful, elusive Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne. Included here are such celebrated, lyrical poems as “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” as well as Yeats’s imaginative retellings of Irish fairytales—including his first major poem, “The Wanderings of Oisin,” based on a Celtic fable—and his critical writings, which offer a fascinating window onto his artistic theories. Through these enchanting works, readers will encounter Yeats as the mystical, lovelorn bard and Irish nationalist popular during his own lifetime. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A stunning facsimile of the 1919 first edition of William Butler Yeats’s The Wild Swans at Coole: an elegant volume showcasing these poems as they would have first been read and a complement to facsimile editions The Winding Stair and The Tower. Published in 1919 during W.B. Yeats’s “middle stage” and composed of poems written during World War I, The Wild Swans at Coole is contemplative and elegiac. This collection captures Yeats at a time when he was looking back on his life, coming to terms with the realities of modern war, reflecting on lost love, and defining his place in the world as a poet. It features forty poems, among them “The Fisherman,” “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” “The Wild Swans at Coole,” and “On Being Asked for a War Poem.” This facsimile of the original 1919 edition presents the reader with the work in its original form, with handsome old fashioned type, how readers and Yeats himself would have seen it in the early twentieth century. A great gift book and collector’s item, The Wild Swans at Coole also includes an Introduction and notes by esteemed Yeats scholar George Bornstein.

First published in 1928, The Tower was Yeats’s first collection published after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1923, and it is perhaps the major work that most cemented his reputation as one of the foremost literary figures of the twentieth century. The titular poem, ‘The Tower’, refers to Thoor Ballylee Castle, a Norman tower that Yeats purchased in 1917, and which formed the basis of the original cover design – evoked in the cover of this edition. The collection also includes some of his most inventive and profound work, and develops deep themes regarding life, love and myth. With explanatory notes, this edition seeks to bring the collection to a greater readership and to offer a more profound understanding of the great poet’s work.