The poetry of Thomas Sterns Eliot and William Butler Yeats"The point of view that I struggle to attack is perhaps linked to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for this What I mean is that the poet has not a "personality" to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways." These exact lines were quoted from Thomas Sterns Eliot's (hereinafter Eliot) essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent", first published in Egoist, December 1920. This shows the kind of approach Elliot had towards poetry, an approach that most poets lacked; a historically motivated approach; an approach shared by William Butler Yeats (hereinafter Yeats) as he once stated "The mystical life is the center of all I do, of all I think, and of all I write." Yeats and Eliot are the two major modernist poets of the English language. Both were Nobel Prize winners. Both were critics of literature and culture and expressed a similar disquiet about Western civilization. Both, perhaps driven by the Russian Revolution, or by the violence and horror of the First World War, imagined a sick Europe, literally falling apart, devoid of the ontological sense of rational purpose that fueled Europe and America post-enlightenment. 1). All these similar experiences make their poetry more valuable to compare and contrast as their thoughts were similar, yet one called himself a classicist (Eliot) who wrote objectively and the other considered himself "the last romantic" because of his writing subjective and his interest in mysticism. and the spiritual one. For a better understanding of these two poets it is necessary to mention some facts and background that influenced them to incorporate similar historical motifs (to some extent) in their poetry. WB Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin. His parents were John Butler Yeats, a portrait painter, and Susan Pollexfen. His family was upper class, Protestant and of Anglo-Irish origin. His ancestors were church rectors. His mother's family, the Pollexfen, were known for their eccentricities manifested by their interest in astrology and magic. He was very interested in super sensual experiences and visions that came to him "from the depths of his mind". Eventually, he became interested in Hinduism and the occult. During his lifetime, he developed interests in theosophy, ancient civilizations, psychic power, spiritualism, magic, Eastern religions and the supernatural which in due course led to the conception of "The Second Coming" (first published in November 1920).