On Being Asked For A War Poem
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On Being Asked For A War Poem
Photograph of William Butler Yeats taken by Charles Beresford in 1911 "On being asked for a War Poem" is a poem by William Butler Yeats written on 6 February 1915 in response to a request by Henry James that Yeats compose a political poem about World War I. Yeats changed the poem's title from "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations" to "A Reason for Keeping Silent" before sending it in a letter to James, which Yeats wrote at Coole Park on 20 August 1915. The poem was prefaced with a note stating: "It is the only thing I have written of the war or will write, so I hope it may not seem unfitting."Yeats, William Butler. qtd. in ''A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats''by Norman Alexandere Jeffares. Stanford University Press (1968)p.189 The poem was first published in Edith Wharton's '' The Book of the Homeless'' in 1916 as "A Reason for Keeping Silent".Jeffares,Alexander Norman.''A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats''.Stanfor ...
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William Butler Yeat By George Charles Beresford
William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of England in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. It is sometimes abbreviated "Wm." Shortened familiar versions in English include Will, Wills, Willy, Willie, Liam, Bill, and Billy. A common Irish form is Liam. Scottish diminutives include Wull, Willie or Wullie (as in Oor Wullie or the play ''Douglas''). Female forms are Willa, Willemina, Wilma and Wilhelmina. Etymology William is related to the German given name ''Wilhelm''. Both ultimately descend from Proto-Germanic ''*Wiljahelmaz'', with a direct cognate also in the Old Norse name ''Vilhjalmr'' and a West Germanic borrowing into Medieval Latin ''Willelmus''. The Proto-Germanic name is a ...
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Poem
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle. Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poetry, the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', as well as religious hymns (the Sanskrit ' ...
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William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish literary establishment who helped to found the Abbey Theatre. In his later years he served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. A Protestant of Anglo-Irish descent, Yeats was born in Sandymount and was educated in Dublin and London and spent childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, lasting roughly from his student days at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. F ...
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Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. Examples of such novels include '' The Portrait of a Lady'', ''The Ambassadors'', and ''The Wings of the Dove''. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his ...
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World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ...
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Coole Park
Coole Park is a nature reserve of approximately located a few miles west of Gort, County Galway, Ireland. It is managed by the Irish National Parks & Wildlife Service, part of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The park is in a low–lying karstic limestone area characterised by seasonal lakes, known as turloughs, which are almost unique to Ireland. It has extensive woodlands. There are 6 kilometres of signposted nature trails plus a formal late 18th century walled garden. History The park was formerly the estate of the Gregory family. Coole House was built in the late 18th century for Robert Gregory: a three-storey house with a square porch and as principal rooms a dining room and drawing-room with bay windows facing out to Coole Lough and the Burren Hills, and a library in between them. In 1880, Robert's great-grandson, William Henry Gregory married Isabella Augusta Persse, who became Lady Gregory. The death in World War I of their only child, Robert, a p ...
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Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (; born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and interior designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray realistically the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Literature, for her novel ''The Age of Innocence''. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. Among her other well known works are ''The House of Mirth'' and the novella ''Ethan Frome''. Biography Early life Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862 to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City. To her friends and family she was known as "Pussy Jones". She had two older brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward. Frederic married Mary Cadwalader Rawle; their daughter was landscape archite ...
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The Book Of The Homeless
''The Book of the Homeless'' is a 1916 collection of essays, art, poetry, and musical scores. Proceeds of its sales were used to fund civilians displaced by World War I. It was edited by Edith Wharton Contents * A letter from Joseph Joffre * An introduction from Theodore Roosevelt * A preface by Edith Wharton Other Works * "The Brothers" by Maurice Barrès * "A Promise" by Sarah Bernhardt * "The Orphans of Flanders" by Laurence Binyon * "One Year Later" by Paul Bourget * "The Dance" by Rupert Brooke * "The Precious Blood" by Paul Claudel * "by How the Young Men died in Hellas" Jean Cocteau * "Poland Revisited" by Joseph Conrad * "La légende de Saint Christophe" by Vincent d'Indy * "The Right to Liberty" by Eleonora Duse * "Harvest" by John Galsworthy * "The Arrogance and Servility of Germany" by Edmund Gosse * "A Message" by Robert Grant * "Cry of the Homeless" by Thomas Hardy * "Science and Conscience" by Paul Hervieu * "The Little Children" by William Dean Howells * "An ...
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The Wild Swans At Coole
''The Wild Swans at Coole'' is the name of two collections of poetry by W. B. Yeats, published in 1917 and 1919. Publication history ''The Wild Swans at Coole'', a collection of twenty-nine poems and the play ''At the Hawk's Well'', was first published by the Cuala Press in November 1917. The title poem of the collection had first appeared in the '' Little Review'' in June of that year. Macmillan (London and New York) republished the poems in March 1919 without the play but with an additional seventeen poems. The completed volume, also called ''The Wild Swans at Coole'', represents the "middle stage" of Yeats' writing and is concerned, amongst other themes, with Irish nationalism and the creation of an Irish aesthetic. Poems in ''The Wild Swans at Coole'' (1917) *" The Wild Swans at Coole" *"Men Improve with the Years" *"The Collar-Bone of a Hare" *"Lines Written in Dejection" *"The Dawn" *"On Woman" *"The Fisherman" *"The Hawk" *"Memory" *"Her Praise" *"The People" *"His Pho ...
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Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, and the North Sea to the northwest. It covers an area of and has a population of more than 11.5 million, making it the 22nd most densely populated country in the world and the 6th most densely populated country in Europe, with a density of . Belgium is part of an area known as the Low Countries, historically a somewhat larger region than the Benelux group of states, as it also included parts of northern France. The capital and largest city is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, Bruges, Namur, and Leuven. Belgium is a sovereign state and a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. Its institutional organization is complex and is structured on both regional ...
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Politics (poem)
Photograph of William Butler Yeats taken February 7, 1933. "Politics" is a poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats written on May 24, 1938. It was composed during the time of the Spanish Civil War as well as during the pre-war period of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in Germany. The poem hints at the political situations of "Rome" (Italy), "Russia" (the Soviet Union), and Spain, but ultimately discusses topics more relevant to private human interaction rather than public, or political situations.Robinson, Peter. ''Poetry, Poets, Readers''. Oxford University Press (2002), p. 72-74 The poem never mentions Germany or Hitler, despite the fact that the "war and war's alarms" surrounding the poem's creation arose from fears of Germany's aggression rather than Italy's, Russia's, or Spain's.Maddox, Brenda. ''Yeats's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W.B. Yeats'' HarperCollins (2000) Many versions of the text exist: the original typescript of May 1938, the first typescript with hand-written correct ...
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Poetry By W
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle. Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poetry, the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', as well as religious hymns (the Sanskrit ' ...
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