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Unread 09-13-2017, 11:04 PM
Kyle Norwood Kyle Norwood is offline
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Location: Los Angeles, California
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Only the first 2 1/2 lines of "When You Are Old" parallel Ronsard; the next 9 1/2 lines go their own way. Ronsard is one of the most celebrated French poets, and a fair number of Yeats's readers would have been familiar with him, so Yeats couldn't have thought he could keep the origin of the poem a secret. By today's standards, Yeats should have identified his source in an endnote.

If today's standards are not inherently right, neither are they inherently wrong. They're just today's standards. Today's standards allow a degree of sexual explicitness that would have been considered appalling in many times and places. We're not right or wrong about that either; we're just who we are. Until there's wide agreement that stealing poems is okay, today's standards prevail, and writers should cite their non-obvious sources, whatever their personal views of the matter might be. If they don't, they're asking for trouble.

Last edited by Kyle Norwood; 09-13-2017 at 11:06 PM. Reason: added thought
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