The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 1 (of 8) / Poems Lyrical and Narrative

The collection gathers lyrical and narrative poems that mingle folklore, myth, and personal meditation, using musical, imagistic language to explore love, longing, and the passage of time. Many pieces invoke supernatural presences and landscapes—wood, lake, and twilight—to stage quests, vanished beauties, and yearning for renewal. Other poems employ ballad and conversational forms to examine memory, aging, art, and communal feeling, alternating spare meditative lyrics with richly wrought songs. Together they trace the porous border between dream and waking and the poet’s persistent search for beauty and transcendence.