Yeats’s Unpublished Early Poem, “Sunrise,” and His Later Work

Abstract

Yeats keeps some of his unpublished early poems unpublished. And, by analyzing one of his unpublished poems, “Sunrise,” I will attempt to show how some poetic aspects, including the uses of metaphor of waters, the imagery of the soul, the [non-]uses of commas, and the influence of Shelley on the young Yeats, reappear in his later works in his Collected Poems and Collected Plays, which the poet himself has chosen and published. In “Sunrise” there seems to be some influence of Shelley, at the early stage of poetic training, as illustrated in his early essay, “The Philosophy of Shelley” and “The Moods.” From the earliest career as poet Yeats seems to have realized that poets and scientists are fundamentally different, and what the poet does is to him to speak in images, and in moods, rather than logics. The substance of “Sunrise” and the way it is composed point to what Yeats as poet is to develop. So this poem is an important means to understanding what poetry Yeats is to write. Though it is an immature poem, it is a great source for scholars, who want to demonstrate how Yeats becomes what he is. The paper is an attempt to study in depth the “unpublished” early poem, “Sunrise,” probably, for the first time in Yeats scholarship in Korea, the US, and the English speaking countries, and other nations as well, and hopes that more will be done beginning with this study.