You know that feeling when you read something so profound that you can’t get the words out of your head? Well, I had forgotten that my favourite Yeats poem was in this collection (I’ve been seriously tardy about working on reading the Complete Works), but I was immediately reminded why he’s one of my favourite poets. Most of the poems in this collection are quite good (barring “Anashuya and Vijaya” which I thought was rather trite), but “The Stolen Child” is a whole other level of brilliance. Yeats uses simple phrases and poignant imagery to paint a tantalizing image of the world which is waiting past the border of Faerie, and I don’t think that any other call by the fey can be more haunting than “Come away O human child!/To the waters and the wild/With a faery, hand in hand,/For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” ( )

Being the first collection by the master-to-be. The best-known poem which appeared here is the much-anthologized and set to music "Down by the Salley Gardens", which obviously will live forever, but the other poems are worthwhile as well. One poem is presented in the then-fashionable dialogue format, but for the most part these are short-to-medium explorations of the themes which would frequent Yeats' career. ( )