SOURCE: "The Environment of the Quest: The Poetic Dream," in The Early Poetry of W. B. Yeats: The Poetic Quest, Kennikat Press, 1978, pp. 11-38.

In the following excerpt, Byrd interprets animal and plant imagery as important aspects of Yeats's poetry, suggesting that such images authenticate the "poetic dream" of art's eternal power.

Directly connected with Yeats's use of specific landscapes are his references to the animals and plants that inhabit these areas. Yeats's poems are very heavily populated with various forms ofanimal and vegetable life, and in such a natural way that the reader is not so much aware of their importance as he is conscious of their presence, just as the average person is aware of the natural life around him without thinking about it. With a few obvious exceptions such as the rose, animal and plant life—mice, worms, marigolds, and the like—are presented on...