The text of the poems in this volume is based on the two-volume edition of The Poems of W, B. Yeats published in London in 1949 and followed in The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats; with "He and She," in Supernatural Songs, I have followed the 1956 "Definitive Edition" for the sake of consistency in punctuation. 

(Except for a few unimportant differences of format these editions are virtually identical.) 

The text of the plays is from the "New Edition" of Yeats's Collected Plays. 

The date following each poem or play is that of first publication, as noted in Allan Wade's A Bibliography of the Writings of W. B. Yeats. 

I have used the Variorum Edition for the text of earlier versions of some poems quoted in my introductory essay and of notes that Yeats put into earlier volumes but left out of the Collected Poems. 

I have drawn on all his notes, and added my own critical and interpretive comments, sparingly. 

Where they are included in the section of Notes at the back they are meant to throw light on the poet's allusions or as occasional hints, when it seems most useful, about the organizing thought of poems.

Certain names of people and places, both historical and mythical, appear in more than one poem, and their identification sometimes requires cross reference. 

I have therefore listed proper nouns wherever possible in an alphabetical glossary rather than in the Notes themselves. 

Neither the Glossary nor the Notes is exhaustive, and I have not, except for some special reason, given information readily available in a good dictionary, atlas, or handbook of mythology.