The Winding Stair and Other Poems

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The Winding Stair is a volume of poems by William Butler Yeats, published in 1933. It was the next new volume after 1928's The Tower. (The title poem was originally published in 1929 by Fountain Press in a signed/limited edition, which is exceedingly rare.)

The title refers to the staircase in the Thoor Ballylee castle which Yeats had purchased and lived in with his family for some time. Yeats saw the castle as a vital connection to the aristocratic Irish past which he admired. The phrase "winding stair" is used in the book's third and most famous poem, "A Dialogue of Self and Soul."

Though this volume includes more poems than The Tower, it contains fewer famous ones. The most well-known and frequently anthologized by far are "A Dialogue of Self and Soul" and "Byzantium."

"A Dialogue of Self and Soul" depicts two aspects of Yeats' personality in confrontation. His soul rejects mundane concerns in favor of metaphysical contemplation, while his self (which sits with an ancient Japanese sword on its lap) cherishes worldly concerns and affirms the sufferings of Yeats' life. Self is given the final word.

"Byzantium" is a sequel to "Sailing to Byzantium," (from The Tower), meant to better explain the ideas of the earlier poem.

[edit] Contents

  • In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz
  • Death
  • A Dialogue of Self and Soul
  • Blood and the Moon
  • Oil and Blood
  • Veronica's Napkin
  • Symbols
  • Spilt Milk
  • The Nineteenth Century and After
  • Statistics
  • Three Movements
  • The Seven Sages
  • The Crazed Moon
  • Coole Park, 1929
  • Coole and Ballylee, 1931
  • For Anne Gregory
  • Swift's Epitaph
  • At Algeciras—a Meditation upon Death
  • The Choice
  • Mohini Chatterjee
  • Byzantium
  • The Mother of God
  • Vacillation
  • Quarrel in Old Age
  • The Results of Thought
  • Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors
  • Remorse for Intemperate Speech
  • Stream and Sun at Glendalough