The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats

1950

Brasch PR5900 A17 1950

London: Macmillan

Plotinus’ influence can be seen in Yeats’ poem ‘Among School Children.’ In the final line, Yeats asks, ‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’ He models his question on Plotinus’ discussion of the One as containing no division or distinction; the One is beyond any distinction between subject and object and between knower and the known. Yeats’ image of the dancer and the dance is an image of unity and inseparability in a moment in time.