Of Cú Chulainn and the depths of Irish myth this collection is not... Yeats drastically changes tone and theme in this group of poems to tackle the everyday life of the Irish commoner, which does him no favours in my eyes as his strength comes from reimagining Celtic lore and all that makes Ireland a land of romanticism and passion. From a brown penn (no, literally) to a day at the races, Yeats dredges his mind to take himself into a theme that honestly doesn't fit him well at all. The only poems that I felt had any sort of strength (and even then they aren't quite hitting the right notes) are "His Dream" and "No Second Troy," because they touch on themes that are Yeats at his best - dreaming and the ancient world. Yet, even these two attempts seem like they're being held back by overly literal language and juvenile structure. It's almost painfully obvious that Yeats was feeling off his game (and was forced to publish anyways) or his experiment with mundanity did not work out to his advantage. ( )