Poetry
The Tower
William Butler Yeats · 1928
Synopsis
A collection of poems whose title refers to Thoor Ballylee, the Norman tower that the poet bought and restored in the west of Ireland. It includes notably Sailing to Byzantium, which opens the collection, Meditations in Time of Civil War, Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, Leda and the Swan and Among School Children. The poems move from the local to the general, from the personal to the public, and seek to resolve the conflict between mind and body; old age and the violence of the civil war run through them.
Context
The collection appears in 1928; several poems date from the civil war years, in 1922 and 1923, when the author sits in the Senate. Thomas Sturge Moore designs its cover, the tower reflected in the water, which the poet praises both as an exact portrait and as a symbol. Well received by the public, the book counts among his most influential collections. Jean-Yves Masson translates it into French in 2002, in a bilingual edition.
Who it is for
Poems in English, dense and allusive; a French translation facing the original text exists.
Prizes and reception
Often regarded as its author's best book, whose major works, it is said, follow the Nobel Prize.