Discuss the contribution of W.B. Yeats to early 20th-century poetry

Discuss the contribution of W.B. Yeats to early 20th-century poetry

W. B. Yeats made an extraordinary and multi-faceted contribution to early twentieth-century poetry by blending Irish myth, symbolism, and modern sensibility into a new poetic language that helped shape Modernism. As a poet he moved from the lyrical and romantic verse of his youth into a mature, often austere mode that responds to political turmoil, personal loss, and spiritual searching; this evolution is visible in collections such as The Wind Among the Reeds, The Tower, and Responsibilities. Yeats revived Irish folklore and national history and thereby played a central role in the Irish Literary Revival, using local myths and legends to give universal shape to themes of destiny, decline, and renewal. Technically he enriched English poetry by renewing traditional metres while also experimenting with a denser, imagistic style and symbolic network—images such as gyres, falcons, Byzantium and the "rough beast" became charged with multiple meanings. His wariness about modern disintegration produced some of the most memorable modernist lines, and poems like "The Second Coming" and "Sailing to Byzantium" articulate the spiritual and cultural crisis of the age with prophetic intensity. Yeats’s concern with the artist’s role, historical cycles, and the inner life combined philosophical depth with musical diction, and his work influenced contemporaries and later poets by showing how national identity, mysticism and personal myth-making could be fused into high poetry. Finally, his international stature—confirmed by the Nobel Prize in Literature (1923)—helped to secure the modern reputation of Anglo-Irish verse and made Yeats a central figure for students and readers seeking both the cultural roots and the formal innovations of twentieth-century poetry.