Other Poems

Abstract

For those early lyrics which Yeats never included in one of his collections, the text in the new Poems follows the first publication. Some of these poems were reprinted in various Christmas numbers of The Irish Homestead, which was edited by Yeats’s friend George W. Russell (AE), but it is altogether unlikely that Yeats was responsible for the variants in those editions. Writing to Lady Gregory on 12 December 1902 about the appearance in the journal of “She Who Dwelt among the Sycamores”, for example, Yeats complained that

No! I don’t like that Sycamore poem, I think it perfectly detestable and always did and am going to write to Russell to say that the Homestead, musn’t do this kind of thing any more. I was furious last year when they revived some rambling old verses of mine but forgot about it. I wouldn’t so much mind if they said they were early verses but they print them as if they were new work. (L 390)¹