Discuss Yeats as a modern poet.

While many literary figures were affected by the First World War in one or the other, Yeats remained aloof about the consequences of the war. In his "An Irish Airman Forsee his Death" we find the lines,

 " Those that I fight I do not hate/ Those that I guard I do not love".

 This kind of approach makes him uniquely modern in the sense that he was not carried away by the narrow nationalism of the 19th century. It does not mean that he was totally indifferent to the lot of Irish people who struggled for a free state. But Yeats did not approve of the parochial attitude of the people and wanted to ennoble their cause making it universal in appeal. Yeats, in fact, was moved very much at the bloodshed during the Easter Rising of 1916. He could not reconcile himself to the revolutionary turn of the movement and finds in his EASTER 1916.

Different crirics have responded to Yeat's poetry differently. He is such a wholesome poet that one or the other aspect of his poetry appeals to his readers and critics. Dennis Donogue observes that, " readers who believe that literature is important normally believe that Yeats is important." Though swayed by multifarious interests Yeats's primary concern was poetry. " An enthusiast of vision, he conspired with images, meditating upon unknown thought. But he took up these interests as latent forms of poetry, and the attention he gave them was poetic. Activities capable of being brought to the condition of poetry."