SOURCE: "Prometheus Unbound," in The Spectator, Vol. 150, No. 5464, March 17, 1933, pp. 366–67.

Yeats was an Irish poet, playwright, and essayist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The leading figure of the Irish Renaissance, Yeats was also an active critic of his contemporaries' work. His critical essays appeared initially in the Dial magazine and were collected posthumously in Essays and Introductions (1961). Commentators observe that Yeats judged the works of others according to his own poetic values of sincerity, passion, and vital imagination. In the following essay, Yeats provides a personal account of the influence of Shelley's work.

When I was a young man I wrote two essays calling Shelley's dominant symbol the Morning Star, his poetry the poetry of desire. I had meant to explain Prometheus Unbound, but some passing difficulty turned me from a task that began to seem impossible. What does Shelley mean by Demo-gorgon? It lives...