“Meditations in Time of Civil War ” : W. B. Yeatsʼs Emblems and Illusions of Adversity

The title of this paper refers to the words "Befitting emblems of adversity", the final line of "My House", the second poem in the seven-poem sequence which comprises "Meditations in Time of Civil War ".The aim of the paper is to examine the emblems or symbols Yeats employs in the poem and to make bold to suggest that these speculative poems so closely connected to Yeatss personal circumstances at a particularly fraught time in his life when he was holed up in his tower during the civil war of 1922, furnish revealing insights into the poets creative imagination and the issues that were preoccupying him.