In width of scope, Yeats far exceeds any of his contemporaries. He is the only poet since

the 18th century who has been a public man in his own country and the only poet since Milton who has been a public man at a time when his country was involved in a struggle for political liberty. This may not seem an important matter, but it is a question whether the kind of life lived by poets for the last two hundred years or so has not been one great reason for the drift of poetry away from the life of the community as a whole, and the loss of touch with tradition. Once the life of contemplation has been divorced from the life of action, or from real knowledge of men of action, something is lost which it is difficult to define, but which leaves poetry enfeebled and incomplete. Yeats responded with all his heart as a young man to the reality and the romance of Ireland's struggle but he lived to be completely disillusioned about the value of the Irish rebellion. He saw his dreams of liberty blotted out in horror by" the innumerable clanging wings that have put out the moon". It brought him to the final conclusion of the futility of all discipline that is not of the whole being, and of "how base at moments of excitement are minds without culture". But he remained a man to whom the life of action always meant something very real.

The title below that best expresses the main idea of this paragraph is ______.

A．The Basis of True Poetry

B．The Necessity of Culture

C．Action Versus Contemplation

D．Yeats as a Poet and Patriot