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Studying Yeats for the Leaving Cert

Free, plain-English notes on every prescribed poem: what it says, how it works, and what to write about.

Prescribed for Higher Level, 2026 to 2028. Ordinary Level: The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swans at Coole, An Irish Airman foresees his Death.

Official list (2027)

Big themes across the poems

  • Ireland and politics

    From the scorn of "September 1913" to the awe of "Easter, 1916" and the violence of the Civil War poems: Yeats keeps changing his mind about Ireland, and says so.

  • Ageing

    An old man sails for Byzantium, counts the swans, asks for an old man's frenzy. Age sharpens rather than dulls his poems.

  • Art and permanence

    Poems, golden birds and monuments outlast the people who make them. Yeats sets the lasting work of art against the dying body.

  • Nature and place

    Innisfree, Coole and Ben Bulben are real places. Nature is a refuge, but also a mirror of change and loss.

  • Change and loss

    Everything is "changed, changed utterly". Friends die, causes fail, the world spins into a new age; the poems try to hold what is passing.

How to write about Yeats

  1. 1

    Answer the question

    Take a clear position in your opening paragraph and return to it at the end.

  2. 2

    Quote briefly and exactly

    Short, accurate phrases woven into your sentences beat long quotations.

  3. 3

    Discuss how, not only what

    Imagery, sound, rhyme, stanza shape and tone: say what each does to the reader.

  4. 4

    Use context lightly

    A sentence of history or biography should help you read a line, never replace reading it.

  5. 5

    Range across the poems

    Link several poems through a theme and show how Yeats changes his mind over time.

Key lines to know

Some lines stay with us

Questions

Which Yeats poems are on the Leaving Cert?

At Higher Level: The Lake Isle of Innisfree, September 1913, The Wild Swans at Coole, An Irish Airman foresees his Death, Easter, 1916, The Second Coming, Sailing to Byzantium, Meditations in Time of Civil War, In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz, Swift's Epitaph, An Acre of Grass, Politics, Under Ben Bulben. At Ordinary Level: The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swans at Coole, An Irish Airman foresees his Death.

Is Yeats on the Leaving Cert in 2027?

Yes. The Department of Education's circulars list the same Yeats poems for the 2026, 2027, 2028 examinations.