“Politics,” the last of W. B. Yeats’s Collected Poems (Richard Finneran’s NewEdition), ends with the poet's wish for fulfillment of sexual desire and love: “But Othat I were young again / And held her in my arms.” Yeats wrote this poem inMay 1938, eight months before his death. In another poem, “A Prayer for OldAge,” written in 1934, the poet prays that he “may seem . . . A foolish, passionateman.” In these and other poems of Yeats’s last years, “lust and rage” really seemto “dance attendance upon [his] old age” and “spur [him] into song” (“The Spur”).This paper is an attempt to understand the last years of Yeats’s life and poetry interms of sexuality and love.
The first part of this paper discusses the Steinach operation which Yeatsunderwent in 1934, when he was 68 years old. Although it is uncertain that theoperation had brought the poet the expected “second puberty,” it seems to have hadan psychologically positive effect upon his writing of poetry. During the last fiveyears after the operation, Yeats wrote almost fifty poems, which is surprisingnumber considering his old age and precarious health. In this part of the paper, thepresent writer reads some poems in which the poet's feeling and thought aboutsexuality and love in these final years of his life are most clearly expressed: “APrayer for Old Age,” “The Spur,” “The Wild Old Wicked Man,” and the sequenceof “Supernatural Songs.”
After the operation Yeats met Margot Ruddock, Dorothy Wellesley, EthelMannin, and Edith Shackleton Heald, all of them being young, pretty, and intelligentwomen. They were poets (Ruddock and Wellesley), a novelist (Mannin), and ajournalist (Heald). The second part of this paper deals with the poet’s meetings withthese women, and reads the poems which are based upon, and reveal the nature of, their relations: “Margot,” “Sweet Dancer,” “A Crazed Girl,” “To DorothyWellesley,” and “The Three Bushes.”