Key Facts

• Poet: William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
• Original Title: The Municipal Gallery Revisited
• Written Time: 1937 (Yeats’s late period, near the end of his life)
• First Published: 1939, in Last Poems and Plays
• Form: Reflective Lyric Poem (with autobiographical and elegiac elements)
• Genre: Autobiographical, Historical, and Philosophical Poetry
• Tone: Nostalgic, Proud, Mournful, and Reverent
• Rhyme Scheme: Irregular rhyme; mostly varied patterns reflecting speech-like rhythm
• Meter: Predominantly Iambic Pentameter with flexible variations
• Point of View: First Person (Yeats himself as observer and commentator)
• Summary in a Line: Yeats revisits the Dublin Municipal Gallery. He reflects on Ireland’s history, his lost friends, and his own poetic journey. This ends with gratitude for the noble companions of his life.
• Total Lines: 55 (in several irregular stanzas)
• Total Sections: 7 (divided into numbered parts I–VII)
• Setting:

• Time Setting: Late 1930s Ireland (a time of reflection after the Irish independence struggles)
• Place Setting: The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art (now Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin), where portraits of Yeats’s friends, artists, and national figures are displayed. It symbolizes both Ireland’s history and Yeats’s personal memory.