Abstract
The paper tries to explore the significance of the order of William Butler Yeats’s “The Statues,” “News for the Delphic Oracle,” and “The Long-legged Fly.” My argument is that the placement of three poems reflects Yeats’s views of great art: starting with tragedy and ending with joy, or to be more exact, sex. The bridal chambers of joy, as Yeats puts it, is what art is all about. “The Statues” is a tragic poem, whereas “News for...” accounts for the joy of bridal chambers, which represents Yeats’s heaven or Utopia. It is significant to notice that the two poems are followed by “The Long-legged Fly”; it also deals with a similar idea of tragedy and sex, reinforcing and expanding the same theme of looking for Utopia developed in the previous two poems. Yeats’s pursuit of joy through art stems from his political agenda: leading the Irish people to the land of joy or Utopia. The Utopia Yeats dreams are future Ireland which is soon destined to rise as a new cradle of even higher civilization than the one in ancient Greece.
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