By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Under Ben Bulben’ was completed in 1938, just one year before W. B. Yeats’s death. This makes it one of his last great poems; indeed, he dictated the final revisions to the poems from his deathbed. Yeats dated ‘Under Ben Bulben’ to September 4th, […]
Tag: WB Yeats
A Short Analysis of W. B. Yeats’ ‘Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop’ first appeared as part of the collection Words for Music Perhaps in 1932; it is one of W. B. Yeats’s later poems and part of a series of poems featuring ‘Crazy Jane’. Before we offer some words of […]
A Short Analysis of W. B. Yeats’ ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), written in 1915 and published the following year. It’s one of Yeats’s shortest well-known poems, comprising just six lines, and sets out why Yeats chooses not to write a […]
A Short Analysis of W. B. Yeats’ ‘September 1913’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘September 1913’ is a poem by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939). It describes Ireland in the month of September 1913, as the title suggests, and sees Yeats lamenting the condition of Ireland at that time. Before we offer an analysis of the poem, here’s a […]
A Summary and Analysis of W. B. Yeats’ ‘When You Are Old’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘When You Are Old’ is probably the earliest of Yeats’s truly great poems, written in 1891 when he was still in his mid-twenties and published the following year. Before we offer some words of analysis about this lyric, it might be worth reminding ourselves […]