When I first read Yeats' “The Rider from the North” I couldn't help but think of Harry's McClintock's “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” This sort of peasant paradise with visions of booze-floods and peaceful countryside seem is not an uncommon one, but upon further exploration “The Rider from the North” reveals itself as somewhat more complex. Reading the first refrain, I was led to believe that Yeats' fox declared “the world's bane” to be the “townland” that the rider approaches; communicating a romantic resistance to civilization and exalting the beauty of nature.

Though now it seems to me that the rider's journey is a movement through life where the 'townland' is not simply death, but a rich afterlife. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the poem is the somewhat contradictory elements of Yeat's protestant tendencies and his fascination with fantasy and the magical. When reading of “golden and silver wood” and women “dancing in a crowd,” one almost expects to read faeries peeking out from behind them. Yet in the poem's last full stanza, Yeats invokes the images of the angels Michael and Gabriel. This is all done in a manner that seems thoroughly Irish, giving Gabriel “a fish tail” which recalls a number of Irish water spirits and chimeras.

If my reading is not entirely off-base, Yeats' second verse is rather telling of the author. He writes about a resurrection after death that men are “lucky” not to truly understand, for fear that in truly understanding the nature of death, man will not be able to live life. They might even “let the spade lie” which would certainly betray the protestant work ethic and sense of responsibility. In addition to this, there is also a sense that to realize the beauty of 'heaven' or the 'townland' or perhaps even, God, would rob the physical world of all its beauty.

Like much of In the Seven Woods, “The Rider from the North” speaks to Yeats' struggle with his own mortality and the feelings of futility in his attempt to grasp it. The fox rebukes the moon, in it's attempt to delay the inevitable in the poem's refrain, acknowledging both the terror and the beauty in the short life of the individual.

Questions:
Other than death ("The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water") and the struggles of the artist ("Adam's Curse") what other themes are prevalent in Seven Woods?

The final lines of "The Arrow" seems to speak to Yeats' dissatisfaction with contemporary art. How (if at all) does the rest of this poem fit into this idea?