But certainly The Countess Cathleen has proved itself a very suc cessful stage play, the story is swift and dramatic, the incidents are full of variety, the verse is limpidly clear. The one-act play The Land of Heart's Desire (1894) is very popular and frequent performances of it are given by non-professional theatrical com panies in England and America. His later plays demand great tragic acting, a demand met by Mrs. Patrick Campbell in her per formance in Deirdre (1907) when the play showed itself to be of perfect construction and of intense passionate beauty. Given a great tragic actor The King's Threshold (19o4) is as fine a stage play as Deirdre. Other plays belonging to this period are The Shadowy Waters (1900), On Baile's Strand (1904) and The Green Helmet (1910). By this time he had despaired of finding a verse-theatre and his next play The Player Queen was in prose. It is a delightful phantasy and successful on the stage. Later still, influenced by the Japanese, he was to write four curious Plays for Ddncers (1921) and, in the same mood, The Cat and the Moon (1924). Three of these plays have been performed and with success. He found in this unrealistic form freedom from stage conventions and an opportunity for phantasy.
In all probability these plays for dancers will never have popular appeal but to some they will seem the most beautiful work he has done for the stage. Considered as a poet his poetry falls into three periods, the early, the middle and the late. His early poetry was elaborate and richly wrought, influenced in some de gree by the Pre-Raphaelites, yet side by side with these possibly over-decorated poems can be found beautiful lyrics as simple as an Irish country ballad. By 1910 he had wearied of elaboration, he had been too much imitated, and he turned and attacked his own "embroideries." He had found, too, a new inspiration, a na tional one, and Poems written in Discouragement (1913) are the result of that inspiration. A year later with the publication of
Responsibilities the new note in his verse is firmly struck, the last shred of embroidery for embroidery's sake has been discarded and the beauty of these poems is "like a tightened bow." He is struggling with a new, austere method, he has not entirely mas tered it but he triumphantly emerges from the contest in his next volume The Wild Swans at Cook (1917). This book and each succeeding book mark his third period, the latest volume being The Tower (1927). Some poems in these volumes are obscure but only because they are part of his own difficult philosophy; if that be understood the poems are clear. The sweep and range of his art from The Wanderings of Oisin to The Tower are amazing and it is difficult to think of any other poet writing in English who is so varied and so developed. In 1928 appeared translations of Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus. They are translations made specially for the Abbey Theatre; they are in prose and aim at simple, effective speech rather than meticulous verbal accuracy, the choruses are in rhymed verse. In 1929 he published a book of verse, The Winding Stair. As one of the founders of the Irish Literary Society Yeats had early shown his practical concern with the intellectual life of his country; his work at the Abbey Theatre was but a development of that concern and it was natural for the Government of the Irish Free State to nomi nate him in 1922 as one of its first Senators. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for 1923. (L. Ro.) YELLOWBIRD, a name applied in the United States to the American goldfinch (Astragalinus tristis) and to the yellow warbler (Dendroica aestiva). (See GOLDFINCH, WARBLER.)