The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Yeats, William Butler. “The Scholars.” All Poetry, https://allpoetry.com/The-Scholars.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

William Butler Yeats “The Scholars” is a single-stanza poem that uses regular rhyme and a flexible meter. It takes a lightly ironic approach to the divide between academic literary scholarship and those who create literature, juxtaposing intellectual criticism with passionate inspiration. The poem follows a group of learned men who “Edit and annotate” (Line 3) the work of other poets, but are unable to produce any of their own.