'The Wild Swans at Coole' Summary

The Wild Swans at Coole, a collection of twenty-nine poems and the play At the Hawk's Well, was first published by the Cuala Press in November 1917. The title poem of the collection had first appeared in the Little Review in June of that year. Macmillan (London and New York) republished the poems in March 1919 without the play but with an additional seventeen poems. The completed volume, also called The Wild Swans at Coole, represents the "middle stage" of Yeats' writing and is concerned, amongst other themes, with Irish nationalism and the creation of an Irish aesthetic.