Cold and Passionate as the Dawn
Poetry in the Romantic Tradition in the 19th and 20th centuries, starting with the poetry of William Butler Yeats.
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Yeats in 1920-1922: Violence and Civil War - Part 1
08/13/2026
Yeats in 1920-1922: Violence and Civil War - Part 1
This episode is divided into two parts. Part 1 is focused on "Ninteen Hundred and Nineteen", a sequence poem (set of related short poems) written in 1921. This is a poem of passionate, bitter disillusionment over the collapse of the pre-war liberal order, focused specifically on atrocities committed by the British in suppressing the Irish nationalist movement in what we now call the Anglo-Irish War or the War of Irish Independence 1919-1921. It is a very timely poem. Some lines could have been written in the United States in 2026. In addition, an unpublished poem "Reprisals" is included. Inspired by the same incident, the murder by British Auxiliaries of Eileen Quinn, a young Kiltartan woman, in front of her three children, it is the last of the four elegies for Robert Gregory. References: Yeats, A Life Part 2: The Arch-Poet by Roy Foster. Yeats the Man and the Masks, by Richard Ellman Yeats, by Harold Bloom Our Secret Discipline by Helen Vendler Links: Reprisals Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen Arthur Symons - The Dance of the Daughters of Herodias Shelley - Prometheus Unbound - Act 1 - Lines 1.618 to 1.631 Burke, Ray" Other Cheated Dead: Murder and Reprisals in Galway’s Gregory-Yeats Country", RTE (Irish Public Radio), 2020 RTE Podcast version of "Other Cheated Dead" Doggett, Rob. “Writing out (Of) Chaos: Constructions of History in Yeats’s ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’ and ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War.’” Twentieth Century Literature 47, no. 2 (2001): 137–68. Yeats's "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen": Chronology, Chronography and Chronic Misreading Toby Forshay The Puzzle of Sequence: Two Political Poems Helen Vendler
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Yeats in 1918-1919: Sorrow and System
07/17/2026
Yeats in 1918-1919: Sorrow and System
This episode follows Yeats through 1918 and 1919. His closest friend, Lady Augusta Gregory, suffered the loss of her only child, Major Robert Gregory, shot down on the Italian front in January 1918. He wrote several elegies following his death. An Irish Airman Forsees his Death recasts the Unionist aristocrat as a man of Kiltartan’s poor with no love for the British cause, while his more formal “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory” looks back at other lost friends of his youth, while casting Robert Gregory as a perfect union of intellectual and physical prowess. The automatic writing of his wife Georgie led to the development of a mystical system and a theory of history, described in the two editions of “A Vision”, published in 1925 and 1937. I’m personally not a fan, and indeed Yeats own endorsement is rather equivocal. He writes the first of several poems depicting his internal conflict as a dialogue in “Ego Dominus Tuus”, and his symbolism and his anguish over the violence that had overtaken Europe leads to one of his most well known poems, “A Second Coming”. The next episode will focus on his two long explorations of the violence of Ireland’s war of independence and the civil war that immediately followed the end of British rule. “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen” and “Meditations in a Time of Civil War”. An Irish Airman Foresees his Death In Memory of Major Robert Gregory Ego Dominus Tuus The Second Coming All Souls Night Other Poems mentioned, but not read during the episode. The Phases of the Moon The Double Vision of Michael Robartes References for this episode include: The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats, The poems in this episode were published either in The Wild Swans at Coole or Michael Robartes and the Dancer, with the exception of All Souls Night, included in A Vision and in The Tower. Per Amica Silentia Lunae by William Butler Yeats A Vision by William Butler Yeats Yeats A Life Part 2: The Arch-Poet by Roy Foster. Yeats the Man and the Masks, by Richard Ellman Yeats, by Harold Bloom Our Secret Discipline by Helen Vendler Article about Robert Gregory mentioned in the episode Link to art of W.T. Horton, one of the “ghosts” mentioned in All Souls Night The image for the episode is "The Way of the Soul" part 4 By William Thomas Horton (1864-1919) - Found on internet, Public Domain,
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War, Revolution and Marriage: Yeats in 1916-1917
05/11/2026
War, Revolution and Marriage: Yeats in 1916-1917
This episode looks at 1916 and 1917, years of great change in Ireland and for Yeats. In 1916, Irish nationalists rose up in armed rebellion in the Easter Rising. Yeats was to struggle with the implications of an event that some of his early poems and plays would have celebrated. His struggle led to one of his most well-known poems, Easter, 1916. There is much exposition in the episode but I think it’s unavoidable to have some understanding of this event that did so much to shape 20th century Ireland. In 1917, the 52 year old Yeats plunged himself into a headlong pursuit of marriage. It was a very strange way to go about it, and his eventual marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees was to have a great impact on his mature period of poetry. Poem List The Fisherman Wild Swans at Coole 16 Dead Men The Rose Tree Easter, 1916 Solomon and the Witch References for this episode include: The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats. The poems in this episode were published either in The Wild Swans at Coole or Michael Robartes and the Dancer. Yeats A Life Part 2: The Arch-Poet by Roy Foster. Yeats the Man and the Masks, by Richard Ellman Yeats, by Harold Bloom Our Secret Discipline by Helen Vendler Another work about the “revolutionary generation” that took the extraordinary step of armed rebellion in 1916 is Roy Foster’s Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890–1923
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Yeats in the Early 1900s: Dreams, Broken Dreams and Theater Business
04/13/2026
Yeats in the Early 1900s: Dreams, Broken Dreams and Theater Business
The years from 1900 to 1914 are considered Yeats' middle period. The poetry is stripped down, more direct, often reflecting the controversies he is involved in as he actively tries to shape Irish culture through his leadership of the Abbey Theatre and engagement in other cultural projects, such as Hugh Lane's Dublin Municipal Gallery of Modern Art. His advocacy of free artistic expression leads to controversy, and he becomes estranged from much of the Irish nationalist movement. And of course, there are more poems on his relationship with Maude Gonne, but rather than the impassioned young lover, he now speaks as a middle-aged, unmarried, childless man. There is disillusionment and bitterness with a mundane middle class Dublin that bears little relationship to the his imagined heroic Ireland, intimate with it's mythic past. Both Europe and Ireland are soon to be disrupted by violence that will shape his mature art, but he has no sense of what is to come. Poem List: No Second Troy The Fascination of What’s Difficult Adam’s Curse On Those Who Hated Playboy of the Western World Friends Broken Dreams A Coat The Magi The Cold Heaven Paudeen September 1913 References for this episode include: The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats, Yeats A life Part 1: The Apprentice Mage by Roy Foster. Yeats the Man and the Masks, by Richard Ellman Dramatis Personae by WB Yeats Hail and Farewell by George Moore Image source: By Unknown author - National Library of Ireland at Flickr, Public Domain,
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Yeats, Maud Gonne and Irish Nationalism in the 1890s
03/21/2026
Yeats, Maud Gonne and Irish Nationalism in the 1890s
This episode continues in the 1890s, changing focus to Yeat’s long, doomed love affair with Maud Gonne, the Irish nationalist revolutionary, his work with her in Irish nationalist organizing, and the beginnings of other important long lasting relationships including Lady Augusta Gregory and Olivia Shakespear. The tumult and pain of his relationship with Maud is expressed in poems read from The Wind Among the Reeds and two of his other collections. Poems include: From The Rose (1893) When You are Old From The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) He Wishes For The Clothes Of Heaven He Thinks Of Those Who Have Spoken Evil Of His Beloved He Reproves The Curlew He Hears The Cry Of The Sedge He Thinks Of His Past Greatness When A Part Of The Constellations Of Heaven The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love The Fish From In the Seven Woods (1904) Red Hanrahan’s Song of Ireland Never Give All The Heart Sources for this episode include: Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Yeat’s memoirs of the 1890s: Reveries over Childhood and Youth and The Trembling of the Veil Yeats: A Life Part 1 - The Apprentice Mage by Roy Foster. Yeats the Man and the Masks, by Richard Ellman. Yeats, by Harold Bloom
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Yeats in the 1890s: Tragic Poets, Mystics and Magicians
02/26/2026
Yeats in the 1890s: Tragic Poets, Mystics and Magicians
Cold and Passionate as the Dawn: A podcast devoted to 19th and 20th Century English Language Poetry in the Romantic tradition Season 1: The Poetry of William Butler Yeats Episode 2: Yeats in the 1890s: Tragic Poets, Mystics and Magicians In the 1890s, Yeats explored a bewildering variety of interests, and produced poetry, plays, essays, and folklore collections, started his longest romantic relationship and engaged with mystical and magical groups, the Irish nationalist movement, and a group of young English and Irish poets in London who tended to meet tragic fates. A busy guy! This episode will deal with his fellow poets and his mystical interests, while Irish nationalism and his relationship with Maude Gonne will fall to episode 3. Poems from fellow members of the “Rhymers Club”: Lionel Johnson - The Dark Angel Ernest Dowson - Cynara and Extreme Unction Arthur Symons - Haschisch Poems by Yeats from The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) Into the Twilight, Song of the Wandering Aengus, He Mourns For The Change That Has Come Upon Him And His Beloved And Longs For The End Of The World, The Valley of the Black Pig, The Secret Rose.
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Introduction to the Poetry of William Butler Yeats
02/17/2026
Introduction to the Poetry of William Butler Yeats
Cold and Passionate as the Dawn: A podcast devoted to 19th and 20th Century English Language Poetry Season 1: The Poetry of William Butler Yeats Episode 1: A brief introduction to Yeat's poetry, with "The Second Coming" as an example. Then a look at the world that Yeats grew up in: a rapidly changing Ireland in which the Irish Catholic majority is asserting political and economic power, an Irish Protestant middle class searches for an identity that is not dependent on the British Ascendancy, and the search for meaning that neither traditional Christianity nor the new rationalism can satisfy. The next episode will look at Yeats in the 1890s. Poems include: "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", To Ireland in the Coming Times", "The Stolen Child", "The Second Coming", "Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites" , "The Curse of Cromwell". Bonus: Demonstration that "The Second Coming" can be sung to the tune of "Baa Baa Black Sheep".
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