Summary
Summary of The Wind Among the Reeds
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Longing gives the poems their unity
The Wind Among the Reeds gathers short poems around a sustained feeling of longing. Roses, hair, stars, birds, wind, water and fire fill a world where feelings are suggested rather than explained. Behind many poems lies Yeats's painful love for Maud Gonne, who did not return it as he hoped.
The personal sorrow opens into something wider. Irish myth, hidden spiritual meanings and the symbolist belief in suggestion give the poems ways to reach beyond what they directly name.
Key idea 2
Yeats stands between two worlds
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Key idea 3
Masks make private sorrow more universal
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Key idea 4
The fairy world gives desire shape
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Key idea 5
Symbols gather meaning through repetition
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Key idea 6
The music belongs to the meaning
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Key idea 7
Grief and wonder remain together
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Key idea 8
Sound and image hold the feeling
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Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love music in poetry, myth and mystery, and the young Yeats. These poems welcome anyone drawn to Irish folklore, unanswered love and a soft, dreamlike mood.
What this book is
The Wind Among the Reeds is a book of poems by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, published in 1899. It came out when Yeats was in his thirties, after years of writing about Irish legend, folklore and the unseen world. The poems are short, soft in sound and heavy with symbols: roses, hair, stars, birds, wind, water and fire. Many were written out of a long, painful love for Maud Gonne, who did not return it in the way he hoped.
What do you get from it? A single mood held for about sixty pages, the mood of longing. You also get a way into Irish myth, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and the symbolist idea that a poem can hint at things it never names. Yeats added notes at the back to explain his sources. Let us begin with the poet and the world in which these poems were made.
In this summary
- 1A young poet between two worldsFree
- 2Love and loss under the mask of Aedh
- 3Myth, faeries and the Hosting of the Sidhe
- 4Roses, stars, birds and the language of symbols
- 5Sound, rhythm and how to read aloud
- 6Themes that last and how the book is judged
Key point 1 of 6
A young poet between two worlds
By 1899 William Butler Yeats was already a known figure in Irish and London literary circles. He had grown up between Dublin, London and the west of Ireland, where his family held ties to County Sligo. The stories he heard there about fairies, ghosts and old heroes stayed with him all his life.
The Wind Among the Reeds followed earlier books such as The Rose, which appeared in 1893, and several prose works about Irish legend. It was a book of the Celtic Revival, a movement in which writers sought to give Ireland a literature drawn from its own myths rather than from English models. Yeats believed that the old tales still carried living power.
He was also deeply involved in occult study. He belonged to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a London society devoted to ritual, symbols and magic. Its ideas about roses, crosses and the stars find their way into the poems. He did not write a manual of magic, but he did believe that certain images could move the mind in ways plain argument could not.
The result is a poet who stands with one foot in Irish village belief and the other in a modern, learned search for hidden meaning. That double footing explains the strangeness and the beauty of the collection. It also explains why Yeats wrote notes for the book, which point the reader to folklore, legend and his own theories.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
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Check yourself
Why does Yeats use invented speakers in the love poems?
Right. “The poet seems to want the feeling to be larger than one man's private sorrow.”Not quite. “The poet seems to want the feeling to be larger than one man's private sorrow.”
How do symbols work in these poems?
Right. “It points toward a meaning that the reader feels rather than solves.”Not quite. “It points toward a meaning that the reader feels rather than solves.”
What role does sound play in Yeats's poetry?
Right. “He wanted poetry to be sung or half sung, not read flatly.”Not quite. “He wanted poetry to be sung or half sung, not read flatly.”
Questions about The Wind Among the Reeds
What is The Wind Among the Reeds about?
It is a collection of poems about longing, mostly unanswered love, set among images from Irish myth, folklore and occult symbolism. Roses, birds, stars and wind recur, and several speakers appear under invented names.
Who are Aedh, Hanrahan and Michael Robartes?
They are invented speakers Yeats used in the poems. Aedh is a devoted, suffering lover, Hanrahan a wandering figure from Yeats's stories, and Robartes a questing, learned voice. They let private feeling become more general.
What does the title The Wind Among the Reeds mean?
The title suggests a faint voice moving through bending grass, like a whisper from the unseen world. It fits the book's soft, dreamlike mood and its interest in the sounds of nature and legend.
