Early Yeats Love Poetry was idealistic and romanticised

As I earlier mentioned, Yeats Love Poetry employed a time worn characterisation of the beloved as both absent and unattainable.

Along with these features, the object of Yeats Love Poetry was also treated as very passive. Not for Yeats, the reciprocated joys of ardour and grand passion.

This ploy could also have been a reaction to the emergence of the enfranchised woman of his day, who bucked tradition and flew in the face of convention. His great love Maud Gonne, who had scant time for his advances was an extreme example of this female phenomena. Frankly she had little time for the passive "white beauties" epitomised in eulogies by the poet.

In essence early Yeats Love Poetry were romanticised with beautiful lyrics. The stark and harder poetry of his latter years were still some time off.

Let us look at a few examples:

THE RAGGED WOOD

O, hurry, where by water, among the trees,

The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,

When they have looked upon their images

Would none had ever loved but you and I!

Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed

Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,

When the sun looked out of his golden hood?

O, that none ever loved but you and I!

O hurry to the ragged wood, for there

I will drive all those lovers out and cry

O, my share of the world, O, yellow hair!

No one has ever loved but you and I..

The idealism of early Yeats Love Poetry is very obvious here. Here are a few more from the genre:

BROWN PENNY

I whispered, 'I am too young,'

And then, 'I am old enough';

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love.

'Go and love, go and love, young man,

If the lady be young and fair.'

Ah,penny, brown penny, brown penny,

I am looped in the loops of her hair.

0 love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love

Till the stars had run away

And the shadows eaten the moon.

Ah,penny, brown penny, brown penny,

One cannot begin it too soon..

A DRINKING SONG

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That's all we know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth,

I look at you, and I sigh..

A POET TO HIS BELOVED

BRING you with reverent hands

The books of my numberless dreams,

White woman that passion has worn

As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,

And with heart more old than the horn

That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:

White woman with numberless dreams,

I bring you my passionate rhyme..

HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTH OF HEAVEN

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams..

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven has famous lines which exhibit the genius of Yeats Love Poetry: "I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

This is lyrical beauty at its finest. The sheer sensitivity of Yeats Love Poetry touches the soul in a wonderful way, even if the more practical minded observer might pretend otherwise.

Here are three more examples:

HE BIDS HIS BELOVED BE AT PEACE

I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,

Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;

The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,

The East her hidden joy before the morning break,

The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,

The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:

O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,

The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:

Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat

Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,

Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,

And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet..

A DRINKING SONG

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That's all we know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth,

I look at you, and I sigh..

THE INDIAN TO HIS LOVE

The island dreams under the dawn

And great boughs drop tranquillity;

The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,

A parrot sways upon a tree,

Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.

Here we will moor our lonely ship

And wander ever with woven hands,

Murmuring softly lip to lip,

Along the grass, along the sands,

Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:

How we alone of mortals are

Hid under quiet boughs apart,

While our love grows an Indian star,

A meteor of the burning heart,

One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart,

The heavy boughs, the burnished dove

That moans and sighs a hundred days:

How when we die our shades will rove,

When eve has hushed the feathered ways,

With vapoury footsole by the water's drowsy blaze.

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