“Do We or Do We Not, Know It?”: an Unpublished Essay on W. B. Yeats

Abstract

Before speaking of poetry which everybody is politely assumed to know, though certain facts suggest that several even of our professional critics have no more than a nodding acquaintance with it, I must humbly beg forgiveness of those whom this initial assumption wrongs. Like myself they will often have fumed to observe less central characters singled out as though they explained the success. I picture these, my fellows, in dispersed retreats, indifferent to noisy superficial fashions because.