Four Years

Four Years is a collection of poems by the renowned Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The book was first published in 1919, and it contains a series of poems that Yeats wrote during the years 1914 to 1918. This period was marked by the outbreak of World War I and the Easter Rising in Ireland, and the poems in Four Years reflect Yeats' response to these events.The poems in Four Years are deeply personal and introspective, exploring themes of love, loss, and mortality. Many of the poems are elegies for friends and acquaintances who died during the war, and they express Yeats' grief and sense of loss. Other poems in the collection are more political in nature, reflecting Yeats' interest in Irish nationalism and his support for the Irish Republican cause.Despite the somber themes of many of the poems in Four Years, the collection is also marked by Yeats' characteristic wit and humor. The poems are written in Yeats' distinctive style, which combines traditional Irish folk motifs with a modernist sensibility.Overall, Four Years is a powerful and moving collection of poems that captures the tumultuous events of the early 20th century and the profound impact they had on Yeats' life and work. It is a must-read for anyone interested in modernist poetry, Irish literature, or the history of the early 20th century.Of late years I have often explained Wilde to myself by his family history. His father, was a friend or acquaintance of my father's father and among my family traditions there is an old Dublin riddle: 'Why are Sir William Wilde's nails so black?' Answer, 'Because he has scratched himself.' And there is an old story still current in Dublin of Lady Wilde saying to a servant. 'Why do you put the plates on the coal-scuttle? What are the chairs meant for?' They were famous people and there are many like stories, and even a horrible folk story, the invention of some Connaught peasant, that tells how Sir William Wilde took out the eyes of some men, who had come to consult him as an oculist.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.