Andrew M -- yes, that is well put. I don’t get the sense that Yeats endorses some kind of aesthetic quietism as ‘the answer’.

IMHO, art is not art that does not stir the emotions. I think there is a hierarchy of emotions, and the better or nobler the emotions, the more they want, even demand, to be shared, to be realized outside the imagination, and not walled inside like a barren, landlocked sea. How to realize these emotions in ‘the mire of existence’: ah, that is the question...

(Gratuitous, off-topic aside, which I reserve the right to delete: one reason that I dislike some of Stevens’s work is that I judge it too intellectual: detached and emotionally sterile. Jarrell fabulously called this quality in some of Stevens's work ‘G.E. Moore at the spinet.’ There are better examples of this than the poem referenced above, but I think the criticism holds for that poem.)

Just coming in very briefly here to say what a great thread this is. Thanks, Aaron, for starting it and thanks everyone else for coming in with very illuminating comments and sidelights. I'm particularly grateful to Clive for the link to 'High Talk' and Gjertrud Schnackenberg's commentary on it.

Hope to come back soon with a contribution of my own...

Great thread, thanks. Yes, through the years Yeats' lens on life changed dramatically. His long love for Maud Gonne I believe tempered his poetry. I was sent this excerpt from the poem, "Vacillation" for my fiftieth birthday and (as another poet said) “it has made all the difference”:

(from Vacillation)
Verse IV

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then gravely said, honeying malice:
—I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the coalquay whore.
He broke away.
—Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Ængus of the birds. Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts and offals.
Stephen rose.

This is spoken by "Buck" (Malachi) Mulligan in chapter one of Ulysses. Is it possible that in "High Talk" Yeats is taking a dig at his younger rival? Joyce based Mulligan on his and Yeats's mutual friend Oliver St. John Gogarty.

Curious at GS's mention of a classical (dactylic) hexameter, I just counted the syllables in the lines. She's right about the lurching, off-balance effect of the meter, but I don't find any great profusion of triple feet.

Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye. 15
What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high, 15
And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern Stalks upon higher, 14
Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire. 15

Because piebald ponies, led bears, caged lions, make but poor shows, 15
Because children demand Daddy-long-legs upon his timber toes, 16
Because women in the upper storeys demand a face at the pane, 17
That patching old heels they may shriek, I take to chisel and plane. 15

Malachi Stilt-Jack am I, whatever I learned has run wild, 15
From collar to collar, from stilt to stilt, from father to child. 15

All metaphor, Malachi, stilts and all. A barnacle goose 15
Far up in the stretches of night; night splits and the dawn breaks loose; 15
I, through the terrible novelty of light, stalk on, stalk on; 15
Those great sea-horses bare their teeth and laugh at the dawn. 13

It's 14 lines to be sure, but in couplets. I don't find a lot of common ground with this and the sonnet tradition. Actually I hear more of a "sprung" fourteener in these lines; it could easily be written in (admittedly loose) ballad stanzas.

Processions that lack high stilts
have nothing that catches the eye.
What if my great-granddad had a pair
that were twenty foot high,

And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern
Stalks upon higher,
Some rogue of the world stole them
to patch up a fence or a fire.

Because piebald ponies, led bears,
caged lions, make but poor shows,
Because children demand Daddy-long-legs
upon his timber toes,

Because women in the upper storeys
demand a face at the pane,
That patching old heels they may shriek,
I take to chisel and plane.

Malachi Stilt-Jack am I,
whatever I learned has run wild,
From collar to collar, from stilt to stilt,
from father to child.

All metaphor, Malachi, stilts and all.
A barnacle goose
Far up in the stretches of night; night splits
and the dawn breaks loose;

I, through the terrible novelty
of light, stalk on, stalk on;
Those great sea-horses bare their teeth
and laugh at the dawn.

One curious thing about the poem in long lines is the capitalized "Stalks" in the middle of l. 3.

I think the capitalization of "stalks" in L.3 may be a misprint, as it does not appear with the capital in any of my editions, including the variorium.

I definitely detect Oliver St. John Gogarty. The Finneran notes indicate there was also an Irish saint, St. Malachy (1095-1148) "known for his reforms."

I consider The Comedian as the Letter C to be one of the finest contemporary (sort of) poems in blank verse that I've read. At times, it's as marvelous as Shakespeare.

*ducks the slings and arrows...

As for the Yeats poem. I used to say that Yeats didn't know how to write a bad poem. He was one of my first inspirations. I'll never forget the day I opened a book of his poems in the high school library. I was in love almost immediately.

The golden apples of the sun,
The silver apples of the moon... - better than sex.

**removed Jim's name above, as it was Michael Ferris who linked to the Stevens' poem, not Jim. / :