Yeats poetry is becoming more fleshed out and longer in these later stages, as well as more structured. I like the expression that says that though many modernists came into their own by abstracting their formal style, he ironically came more into his by tightening it. However the formal concerns in these poems certainly give a more self aware feel to them. To start The Tower off with two poems directly about aging was still standard good old Yeats. In the second poem, The Tower the speaker discusses the relationship between his imagination and heart and his physical existence. If he leaves his imagination, his life will no longer seem worth living, and his body will slowly decay, but if he continues to live in his memories he will be unconscious of his final years in his physical state. This is interesting because it (for me) is the first time Yeats addresses the choice of loss.
Loss has been a major motif which I have been thinking about for my paper, and in reviewing many of the losses in the texts, they seem to be inevitable; loss of age (many poems), loss of sanity The Madness of King Goll, Loss of love (many poems), and many more. The fact that there was foresight with this loss seems particularly important, and the stage of his career in which he wrote it seems significant. His loss, or never attained love Maude Gonne as well as his own loss of age, which we discussed was conscious from a very early age reflect his own life, as well as the confusing history of Ireland with constant losses of control, leadership, history, etc. but I wonder where people think this theme comes from?