Wind Among the Reeds (Version 3)

The Wind Among the Reeds captures Yeats at the moment his vision crystallized. These are poems written at the threshold between centuries, steeped in Irish myth and occult symbolism, pulsing with a desperate, sensual longing. Here the old mother sings of her wasted youth, the beloved burns like a rose, and the speaker pleads with ancient powers to reveal hidden beauty. Yeats draws on the theosophy and hermeticism that consumed him, but what emerges is not mere esotericism, it is longing made language, the self confronting its own mortality and desire. The collection announces a poet who would become the twentieth century's greatest voice of mystical nationalism, but here he is still young, still raw, offering us the feverish beauty of a man who believed poetry could invoke the gods. For readers who want poetry that feels like a spell.