Books: Treading softly on dreams; WB Yeats: A Life: II The Arch-Poet By RF Foster OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS pounds 30 (816pp) pounds 27 (plus pounds 2.25 p&p per order) from 0870 800 1122.(Features) From: The Independent (London, England) | Date: November 14, 2003| Author: | COPYRIGHT 2003 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Byline: Terence Brown

When Richard Holmes left Samuel Taylor Coleridge on board ship en route to the Mediterranean at the end of the first of his two-volume life of the English poet and sage, he knew that much of what readers value about Coleridge's achievement was already in existence in 1804. A second volume would have to counter a legend of decline and frequently threatened personal disintegration, much of the great work behind him. By contrast, the challenge facing Roy Foster in this second of his two-volume life of W B Yeats is that ,although the years 1865 to 1914 had ...