Octavo. 2, xiv, 305pp. As noted in Wade, this is one of a few copies that mark pp. xi-xii as xi. Yeats constantly revised his work between publications and editions, here in the form of a new preface and additions to the note at the end of The Countess Cathleen. His exacting oversight of his books' designs often wore commercial publishers to exhaustion - in his correspondence with Unwin on earlier editions of Poems, Yeats pestered his publisher over the use of single inverted commas and the capitalization of titles. Yeats believed that a rigorous aesthetic program for his books would reify the equally rigorous spiritual symbolism fundamental to his poetry. Hence his advocacy for the binding's designer, Althea Gyles, whom he said "has a thorough understanding of the symbolism of my work & her designs are fitted to it as no other designs could be" (WBY to TFU, 1 Feb. 1899). For Poems Gyles contributed an upper cover of a rosy-cross set among vines, a rear cover rose, and a spine of a shrouded figure set among doves, roses, and stars: a complement to her other Unwin-published Yeats book, The Secret Rose (1899). All in gilt against full blue cloth over boards. Modest edge rubs, lacking errata slip, slight foxing along fore-edge. Very good. Signature of former owner to front flyleaf.