Nothing more accurately mirrors the changing tides of Yeats's life than do his love poems, from the youthful verses inspired by Maud Gonne to the Testimony of Later Years written beside the flooded lake at Coole. These verses chart his dreams and devotions, moods of ecstasy and despair, and moments of sensuality and disillusion. In his introduction to this edition of Yeats's love poems, Professor Jeffares sets the work into the framework of Yeats's life. He explores the influences that shaped the verses, the friends and lovers who provoked such feeling, and the arts and the cults that influenced his thoughts.