¶ … Yeats' the Wanderings of Oisin

William Butler Yeats' the Wanderings of Oisin is an epic poem told in three parts, or books. These three books reflect the stages of Oisin's life and journey -- his time with the immortals, his attempts to return to Ireland and the adventures he encounters, and his eventual journey back to and time in Ireland. The metrical structure changes from book to book, as well, with four, five, and six metrical feet per line, respectively. The first two books have no regular number of lines per stanza, but the third book has more regularity with four lines per stanza. These structural elements are used to organize a complex story into more manageable chunks.

The poet's decision to divide the story this way is a standard of the epic tradition. The specific choice of three books is not standard, however, and may reflect the holy trinity of Christianity which supplants the traditional Celtic religion and mythology in the poem. The verse structure is not consistent from book to book, though the third book consists purely of four-line stanzas, whereas the rest of the poem does not even have this regularity. Its use in the third book could foreshadow the return to normalcy and balance that comes with Oisin's literal fall.

Yeats uses form to help clarify and define meaning. In the third book, with its regular four-line stanzas, there is a driving and almost monotonous pace that recalls the hoof-beats of the horse from which Oisin must not alight. In the first two books, when the end is not so imminently near, stanza length is adjusted to account for each piece of the story, with enough lines used per stanza to tell each discrete piece of the story, whether that be only three lines or twenty. Yeats' adaptation of the poem's form at various pints reinforces the storytelling and subtextual meanings of the poem.