“And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.”
From The Song of the Wandering Aengus
While Yeats was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Shelley, there was a transient sense of his imagery moving across Irish folklore and Irish Nationalism. Needless to say, he was influenced by the Irish mythological cycl...