Poems of the 1920s

The next two poems are taken from The Tower (1928), which was widely recognized as Yeats's most important volume of poems up to that time. In it his varied interests seem at last to coalesce: the Irishness, tempered by experience of the actual history of recent years; the spiritual beliefs, purged of dottiness, are announced with authority; and his love of women, now that he had married and had children, seems temporarily domesticated - vigorous attention is given to family and home. The tower of the title is both that home (see illustration, p. 100) and also Samuel Palmer's Lonely Tower (see illustration and discussion on pp. 51, 170—1) with all its richness of symbolism. However, as Richard Ellmann wittily puts it: 'At Thoor Ballylee in 1922 the symbolical tower seemed likely to be attacked by unsymbolical men and weapons at any moment . . .' ⁷ The fact that the tower had been so threatened during the Civil War brought home to Yeats that he, and Ireland, had much to lose in the present crisis of Irish history.