W.B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), was one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. Yeats received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He was born on June 13, 1865, in Dublin.

Yeats studied at the Metropolitan School of Art. During his life, he was fascinated by reincarnation, supernatural systems and Oriental mysticism. In 1886 Yeats formed the Dublin Lodge of the Hermetic Society.

Yeats published his first poems in The Dublin University Review in 1885. In 1889 Yeats met his great love, Maud Gonne (1866-1953), an actress and Irish revolutionary who became a major landmark in his life and imagination. However, she married someone else, which inspired Yeats' poem
"No Second Troy."

Yeats was interested in
folktales as a part of an exploration of national heritage and for the revival of Celtic identity. His study with George Russell and Douglas Hyde of Irish legends and tales was published in 1888 as "Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry."

In 1917 Yeats married Georgie Hyde-Lee. She demonstrated a gift for automatic writing. Her seer abilities inspired "A Vision," a book of marriage therapy spiced with occultism.

Yeats died on January 28, 1939 at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France.

No Second Troy
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Broken Dreams

THERE is grey in your hair.
Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
When you are passing;
But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing
Because it was your prayer
Recovered him upon the bed of death.
For your sole sake - that all heart's ache have known,
And given to others all heart's ache,
From meagre girlhood's putting on
Burdensome beauty - for your sole sake
Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,
So great her portion in that peace you make
By merely walking in a room.
Your beauty can but leave among us
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
A young man when the old men are done talking
Will say to an old man, "Tell me of that lady
The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
When age might well have chilled his blood.'
Vague memories, nothing but memories,
But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.
The certainty that I shall see that lady
Leaning or standing or walking
In the first loveliness of womanhood,
And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,
Has set me muttering like a fool.
You are more beautiful than any one,
And yet your body had a flaw:
Your small hands were not beautiful,
And I am afraid that you will run
And paddle to the wrist
In that mysterious, always brimming lake
Where those What have obeyed the holy law
paddle and are perfect. Leave unchanged
The hands that I have kissed,
For old sake's sake.
The last stroke of midnight dies.
All day in the one chair
From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged
In rambling talk with an image of air:
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
So stilly round the evening falls
The veiled sun sheds no parting smile
Nor mirth nor music wakes my Halls