“Leda and the Swan” is a very beautiful sonnet. The editors of THE FABER

BOOK OF SONNETS certainly thought so, at any rate; they included it.

“The Two Kings” is long enough for most of us at 219 lines; it was published

in the poet’s 50th year.

As to “obscurity of reference,” I shall let a reader answer: If this is a

criterion for modernism, then “that Shakespeare guy was way, way ahead of

his time.”

Wayward, contrived, “modernist” rhyme schemes? It is news to me that the

modernists cared about rhyme at all; but here are some (representative)

Yeats rhymes, from “An Irish airman foresees his death”:

fate/above/hate/love, Cross/poor/loss/before, fight/crowds/delight/clouds,

mind/breath/delight/death.

“The easiest way to claim consistency is by drafting everybody one likes to

one’s own team.” Oh yes, indeed. But so far as my team is concerned, Yeats

was not drafted — he volunteered.

“Yeats has the field markings of a modernist because, whatever he thought he

was doing, he was one.” No offense, but I think I’d prefer to take Yeats’s

word for what he was doing. He was a scrupulously honest man.