William Butler Yeats
Whole text
- p.187
- Was it the double of my dream
The woman that by me lay
Dreamed, or did we halve a dream
Under the first cold gleam of day? - I thought: 'There is a waterfall
Upon Ben Bulben side
That all my childhood counted dear;
Were I to travel far and wide
I could not find a thing so dear.'
My memories had magnified
So many times childish delight. - I would have touched it like a child
But knew my finger could but have touched
Cold stone and water. I grew wild.
Even accusing Heaven because
It had set down among its laws:
Nothing that we love over-much
Is ponderable to our touch. - I dreamed towards break of day,
The cold blown spray in my nostril.
But she that beside me lay
Had watched in bitterer sleep
The marvellous stag of Arthur,
That lofty white stag, leap
From mountain steep to steep.
Towards Break of Day
Document details
The TEI Header
File description
Title statement
Title (uniform): Towards Break of Day
Author: William Butler Yeats
Responsibility statement
Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by: Beatrix Färber and Rebecca Daly
Funded by: School of History, University College, Cork
Edition statement
1. First draft.
Extent: 737 words
Publication statement
Publisher: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork
Address: College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt
Date: 2014
Distributor: CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.
CELT document ID: E910001-062
Availability: The works by W. B. Yeats are in the public domain. This electronic text is available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of private or academic research and teaching.
Notes statement
Probably written in January 1919; first published in The Dial in November 1920 (A. Norman Jeffares, p. 234).
Source description
Literature (a small selection)
- W. B. Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, consisting of Reveries over childhood and youth, The trembling of the veil, and Dramatis personae (New York 1938).
- Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Corrected edition with a new preface (Oxford 1979). [First published New York 1948; reprinted London 1961.]
- Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan 1957).
- F. A. C. Wilson, Yeats's Iconography (London 1960).
- W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Macmillan 1961).
- W. J. Keith, 'Yeats's Double Dream', Modern Language Notes 76/8 (December 1961) 710–715.
- W. B. Yeats, Explorations: selected by Mrs W. B. Yeats (London/New York: Macmillan 1962).
- Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (New York 1964).
- A. Norman Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats (Stanford 1984).
- A general bibliography is available online at the official web site of the Nobel Prize. See: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-bibl.html
The edition used in the digital edition
Yeats, William Butler (1991). ‘Towards Break of Day’. In: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Ed. by Richard J. Finneran. London: Macmillan Press, p. 187.
You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:
@incollection{E910001-062,
author = {William Butler Yeats},
title = {Towards Break of Day},
editor = {Richard J. Finneran},
booktitle = {The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats},
publisher = {Macmillan Press},
address = { London},
date = {1991},
pages = {187}
}
Encoding description
Project description: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
Sampling declarations
The whole poem.
Editorial declarations
Correction: The text has been proof-read twice.
Normalization: The electronic text represents the edited text.
Hyphenation: The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.
Segmentation: div0= the individual poem, stanzas are marked lg.
Interpretation: Names of persons (given names), and places are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.
Profile description
Creation:
Date: Janaury 1919 [?]
Language usage
- The poem is in English. (en)
Keywords: literary; poetry; W. B. Yeats; 20c
Revision description
(Most recent first)
- 2014-05-02: TEI header created with bibliographical detail. File parsed and validated; SGML and HTML files created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2014-05-01: Structural markup applied according to CELT practice. (ed. Rebecca Daly)
- 1996: First proofing. (ed. Students at the CELT Project, UCC)
- 1996: Text captured (data capture Donnchadh Ó Corráin)