William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount in County Dublin, Ireland, on 13th June 1865.

His early years moved between Ireland and England. By his mid-teens he was writing but those works were described as ‘entirely Un-Irish’. With Ernest Rhys he founded the Rhymers Club. Based at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, it’s best described as a drinking club for performing poets. Yeats later cited them as ‘The Tragic Generation’. By now Yeats was writing and publishing poetry and stories that were profoundly based in Irish folklore.

Yeats is perhaps best described as Ireland’s national poet in addition to being one of the major twentieth-century literary figures of the English tongue. He represents the ‘Romantic poet of modernism,’ with an extraordinary style created from the outward emphasis on the expression of emotions and the extensive use of symbolism, imagery and allusions.

In 1923 his fame was brought to an even wider audience when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

His personal life was driven by his many relationships in love and by his great interest in oriental mysticism and occultism. Yeats also wrote prose and drama and, as an ardent Nationalist, established himself as a spokesman of the Irish cause and served as an Irish senator for two terms.

W. B. Yeats died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France, on 28th January 1939. He was 73.

In modern times his contribution to literary modernism and to Irish nationalism remains incontestable. His sumptuous poetry elegantly envelopes the reader or listener in a world very few can articulate but all know well. A legacy for everyone.

1 - The Poetry of W. B. Yeats - An Introduction

2 - A Man Young and Old - I - First Love

3 - A Man Young and Old - II - Human Dignity

4 - A Man Young and Old - III - The Mermaid

5 - A Man Young and Old - IV - The Death of the Hare

6 - A Man Young and Old - V - The Empty Cup

7 - A Man Young and Old - VI - His Memories

8 - A Man Young and Old - VII - The Friends of His Youth

9 - A Man Young and Old - VIII - Summer and Spring

10 - A Man Young and Old - IX - The Secrets of the Old

11 - A Man Young and Old - X - His Wildness

12 - A Man Young and Old - XI - From 'Oedipus at Colonus'

13 - A Cradle Song

14 - A Prayer for My Daughter

15 - The Mother of God

16 - Among School Children

17 - The Stolen Child

18 - Long-Legged Fly

19 - The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers

20 - The Lake Isle of Innisfree

21 - The Wild Swans at Coole

22 - Leda and the Swan

23 - The Cat and the Moon

24 - Those Dancing Days Are Gone

25 - Imitated From The Japanese

26 - All Things Can Tempt Me

27 - A Statesman's Holiday

28 - The Fascination of What's Difficult

29 - A Drinking Song

30 - He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven

31 - He Bids His Beloved Be at Peace

32 - The Song of Wandering Aengus

33 - The Travail of Passion

34 - The Falling of Leaves

35 - He Thinks of Those Who Have Spoken Evil of His Beloved

36 - Down by the Salley Gardens

37 - Quarrel in Old Age

38 - The Secret Rose

39 - Under Saturn

40 - To Ireland In The Coming Times

41 - I Am of Ireland

42 - The Second Coming

43 - Meditations in Time of Civil War - I - Ancestral Homes

44 - Meditations in Time of Civil War - II - My House

45 - Meditations in Time of Civil War - III - My Table

46 - Meditations in Time of Civil War - IV - My Descendants

47 - Meditations in Time of Civil War - V - The Road at My Door

48 - Meditations in Time of Civil War - VI - The Stare's Nest By My Window

49 - Meditations in Time of Civil War - VII - I See Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's

50 - From A Full Moon in March - Parnells Funeral

51 - Easter 1916

52 - Come Gather Round Me, Parnelites

53 - September 1913

54 - The Ghost of Roger Casement

55 - The Apparitions

56 - Sixteen Dead Men

57 - An Irish Airman Forsees His Death

58 - He Thinks of His Past Greatness When a Part of the Constellations of Heaven

59 - He Remembers Forgotten Beauty

60 - Men Improve with the Years

61 - When You Are Old

62 - He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead

63 - The Wheel

64 - Sailing To Byzantium

65 - Death