JOY OR NIGHT: LAST THINGS IN THE POETRY OF W. B. YEATS AND PHILIP LARKIN: The W. D. Thomas Memorial Lecture Delivered at the University College of Swansea on 18 January 1993.

First edition, first printing. Original stapled red card wrappers lettered front and rear in black. A fine copy, the wraps clean and bright, the contents clean throughout.

Heaney's lecture discusses Larkin and Yeats' poetic treatments of mortality through close readings of Larkin's late 'Aubade' ("the definitive post-Christian English poem, one that abolishes the soul's traditional pretension to immortality and denies the Deity's immemorial attribute of infinite personal concern") and Yeats' 'The Man and the Echo'. Delivered in Swansea, the lecture was later reprinted in Heaney's Faber volumes, 'The Redress of Poetry' (1990) and 'Finders Keepers' (2002). (Brandes and Durkan A57).