News at Eleven: In her collections over the subsequent

two decades, Boland plays increasingly original and confident variations on traditional forms, myths, and themes. Again, she is often at her best when subtly reworking Yeats. In the witty and erotic "Song" (1975), she uses a rough-hewn Yeatsian ballad to overturn Yeats' typical formula of a doomed male pursuing an unattainable female ideal. Here the woman pursues--and succeeds:

'Look how the water comes
Boldly to my side;
See the waves attempt
What you have never tried.'
He late that night
Followed the leaping tide.

from Big Think: Woman In Pursuit: Eavan Boland, Yeats, and Irish Tradition

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