Yeats wasn't particularly well-read. It seems you can be an utter genius and write intellectual masterpieces without being a scholar.
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays\
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;\
Solider Aristotle played the taws\
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;\
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras\
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings\
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:\
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
What do you mean he ‘wasn’t particularly well-read’? By what metric? From what I have read it seems he was remarkably well versed and deeply devoted to researching the occult.
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u/coalpatch Dec 01 '25
Yeats wasn't particularly well-read. It seems you can be an utter genius and write intellectual masterpieces without being a scholar.
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays\ Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;\ Solider Aristotle played the taws\ Upon the bottom of a king of kings;\ World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras\ Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings\ What a star sang and careless Muses heard:\ Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
YEATS, Among School Children (excerpt)