Beautiful early writings by one of the 20th century's greatest poets on the 150t
h anniversary of his birth
The poems, prose, and drama gathered in "When You A
re 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, dabble
d in magic, and wrote heartrending poems for his beloved, the beautiful, elusive
Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne. Included here are such celebrated, lyrical poem
s as "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," as w
ell as Yeats's imaginative retellings of Irish fairytales--including his first m
ajor poem, "The Wanderings of Oisin," based on a Celtic fable--and his critical
writings, which offer a fascinating window onto his artistic theories. Through t
hese enchanting works, readers will encounter Yeats as the mystical, lovelorn ba
rd and Irish nationalist popular during his own lifetime.
