Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition

Background details and bibliographic information

On a Political Prisoner

Author: William Butler Yeats

File Description

Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by Beatrix Färber, Rebecca Daly

Funded by School of History, University College, Cork

1. First draft.

Extent of text: 794 words

Publication

Distributed by CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.
Text ID Number: E910001-063

Availability [RESTRICTED]

The works by W. B. Yeats are in the public domain. This electronic text is available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of private or academic research and teaching.

Notes

Written between 10 and 29 January 1919; first published in The Dial in November 1920 (A. Norman Jeffares, p. 231).

Sources

Literature (a small selection)
1. W. B. Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, consisting of Reveries over childhood and youth, The trembling of the veil, and Dramatis personae (New York 1938).
2. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Corrected edition with a new preface (Oxford 1979). [First published New York 1948; reprinted London 1961.]
3. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan 1957).
4. W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Macmillan 1961).
5. W. B. Yeats, Explorations: selected by Mrs W. B. Yeats (London/New York: Macmillan 1962).
6. Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (New York 1964).
7. Marjorie Perloff, 'Spatial Form in the Poetry of Yeats: The Two Lissadell Poems', Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 82/5 (October 1967) 444–454.
8. A. Norman Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats (Stanford 1984).
9. Terry Eagleton, 'Politics and Sexuality in W.B. Yeats', The Crane Bag 9/2 (1985) 138–142.
10. Adolphe Haberer, 'Yeats and MacNeice: From Context to Intertext', Irish University Review 27/2 (Autumn/Winter 1997) 219–235.
11. George Bornstein, 'W. B. Yeats's Poetry of Aging', The Sewanee Review 120/1 (Winter 2012) 46–61.
12. A general bibliography is available online at the official web site of the Nobel Prize. See: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-bibl.html

The edition used in the digital edition
1. William Butler Yeats On a Political Prisoner in , Ed. Richard J. Finneran The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Macmillan Press, London, (1991) pages 186

Encoding

Project Description

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

Sampling Declaration

The whole poem.

Editorial Declaration

Correction

The text has been proof-read twice.

Normalization

The electronic text represents the edited text.

Hyphenation

The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.

Segmentation

div0= the individual poem, stanzas are marked lg.

Interpretation

Names of persons (given names), and places are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.

Profile Description

Created: (January 1919)

Use of language

Language: [EN] The poem is in English.

Revision History

• (2014-05-02)

  Beatrix Färber (ed.)

• TEI header created with bibliographical detail. File parsed and validated; SGML and HTML files created.
• (2014-05-01)

  Rebecca Daly (ed.)

• Structural markup applied according to CELT practice.
• (1996)

  Students at the CELT Project, UCC (ed.)

• First proofing.
• (1996)

  Donnchadh Ó Corráin (data capture)

• Text captured

Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition: E910001-063

On a Political Prisoner: Author: William Butler Yeats

p.186

1. She that but little patience knew,
   From childhood on, had now so much
   A grey gull lost its fear and flew
   Down to her cell and there alit,
   And there endured her fingers' touch
   And from her fingers ate its bit.
2. Did she in touching that lone wing
   Recall the years before her mind
   Became a bitter, an abstract thing,
   Her thought some popular enmity:
   Blind and leader of the blind
   Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?
3. When long ago I saw her ride
   Under Ben Bulben to the meet,
   The beauty of her country-side
   With all youth's lonely wildness stirred,
   She seemed to have grown clean and sweet
   Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:
4. Sea-borne, or balanced on the air
   When first it sprang out of the nest
   Upon some lofty rock to stare
   Upon the cloudy canopy,
   While under its storm-beaten breast
   Cried out the hollows of the sea.