William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

‘The best lack all conviction’: It’s not always true, but there are times, like the present, when it does seem accurate. And though Yeats wrote this after the First World War, the poem seems to rediscover its own topicality as each generation faces the baffling reality of its own political system.

I wrote on a previous podcast that Yeats is the unavoidable English language poet. He was so very good at what he did. He wrote better lines, better images, better stanzas and better short poems than almost anyone else, and he did it more often.

Try replacing ‘slouching’ in the final line with a different verb and watch what happens, to both the sound and sense.

If you're interested in Yeats the man, he is the subject of a superb two volume biography by Roy Foster: 'W.B. Yeats a life'. Vol I: The Apprentice Mage, Vol 2 The Archpoet.