Are You Content?

Yeats’ references this verse from Robert Browning’s work
“Pauline – a Fragment of a Confession.”

“They came to me in my first dawn of life,
Which passed alone with wisest ancient books,
All halo-girt with fancies of my own,
And I myself went with the tale,–a god,
Wandering after beauty–or a giant,
Standing vast in the sunset–an old hunter,
Talking with gods–or a high-crested chief,
Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos;–
I tell you, nought has ever been so clear
As the place, the time, the fashion of those lives.”

Yeats was born into an Irish Protestant family in Dublin, Ireland. His father, John Butler Yeats, was a clergyman’s son, a lawyer turned to an Irish Pre-Raphaelite painter. Yeats’s mother, Susan Pollexfen, came from a wealthy family. The Pollexfens had a prosperous milling and shipping business. Yeats’ early years were spent in London and Sligo, a beautiful county on the west coast of Ireland.