Key Facts

• Poet: W. B. Yeats (1865–1939)
• Full Title: The Tower
• Written Time: Around 1926
• First Published: 1928 (in the poetry collection The Tower)
• Form: Long Philosophical Lyric Poem (divided into three parts)
• Genre: Autobiographical, Symbolic, and Philosophical Poetry
• Tone: Reflective, Melancholic, Proud, and Transcendent
• Structure:

• Part I: Conflict between imagination and old age
• Part II: Memory, myth, and the madness of creativity
• Part III: Faith, pride, and the soul’s immortality

• Rhyme Scheme: Irregular (mostly varied patterns with blank verse passages)
• Meter: Predominantly Iambic Pentameter, but flexible
• Narrative Voice: First-person (Yeats himself as a symbolic speaker)
• Total Parts: 3
• Setting:

• Physical Setting: Thoor Ballylee (Yeats’s real tower-home in County Galway, Ireland)
• Spiritual Setting: Between the mortal world and a visionary world of art, memory, and imagination