IN THE SEVEN WOODS

In the Seven Woods masterpiece written in 1903 is Yeats's first twentieth-century poetry collection. Its fourteen poems show him moving steadily away from the decisively Romantic diction of his earlier work. Here we hear a poetic voice that is at once more individual colloquial and dramatic than previously. In addition several poems sound a note of bitter lamentation over the marriage in 1903 of Maud Gonne Yeats's great love and muse to John MacBride.