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Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower Study Guide

by William Butler Yeats

Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower study guide contains a biography of William Butler Yeats, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

The Tower begins with an exposition of the poet's fixation: how to escape aging. In "Sailing to Byzantium," he dreams of leaving Ireland, a young man's country, to be reincarnated as a singing mechanical bird in a Byzantine Court. In "The Tower," Yeats laments his lost love for Maude Gonne, and ruminates on how to reconcile the difference between his youthful spirit and his aging body. "Meditations in a Time of Civil War" and "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" are the most explicitly historical poems of this collection; the former is an intensely personal account of Yeats' family history and his place in the Civil War, the second a more universal account of the chaos that gripped Ireland from 1922 to 1923.

In "The Wheel," "Youth and Age," and…

Read the full Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower Summary

• Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower Summary
• About Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower
• Character List
• Glossary of Terms
• Major Themes
• Summary and Analysis of Sailing to Byzantium
• Summary and Analysis of The Tower
• Summary and Analysis of Meditations in Time of Civil War
• Summary and Analysis of Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen
• Summary and Analysis of Three Fragments on Death
• Summary and Analysis of A Prayer for My Son
• Summary and Analysis of Two Songs from a Play
• Summary and Analysis of Fragments
• Summary and Analysis of Leda and the Swan
• Summary and Analysis of On a Picture of a Black Centaur by Edmund Dulac
• Summary and Analysis of Among School Children
• Summary and Analysis of Oedipus at Colonus
• Summary and Analysis of Wisdom
• Summary and Analysis of The Fool By the Roadside
• Summary and Analysis of Owen Aherne and his Dancers
• Summary and Analysis of A Man Young and Old
• Summary and Analysis of Three Monuments
• Summary and Analysis of All Souls' Night
• The Anglo-Irish War and the Irish Civil War
• Related Links on Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower
• Suggested Essay Questions
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 1
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 2
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 3
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 4
• Author of ClassicNote and Sources

• Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower: Major Themes
• Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower: Questions
• Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower: Purchase the Novel and Related Material
• William Butler Yeats: Biography