Go for a stroll to Sandymount Green and you might see a bust mounted on a tall piece of concrete. To examine this reveals a legend of Irish literary: W.B Yeats, who was born at nearby 5 Sandymount Avenue.

Yeats lived from 1865-1939. He was the greatest poet Ireland has produced and is the acknowledged leader of the Irish literary renaissance.

Son of the painter, John Butler Yeats, William himself began life as an artist. He attended school in London and spent many a vacation in County Sligo, the inspiration for much of his poetry.

Yeats became fascinated by Irish legends and by the occult. His first work ‘Mosada’ in 1886 was mainly concerned with magic, whereas his long poem ‘The Wanderings of Oisin’ in 1889, voiced the intense nationalism of the Young Ireland movement.

Yeats’s work can be divided into two periods, the first being 1886 to 1900, in which he was influenced by Shelley.

This time was mostly concerned with Irish mythology when he wrote ‘Falling Of Leaves’, ‘When You Are Old’ and the legendary ‘Lake Isle of Inisfree’.

It was during these years that he fell in love with the Irish patriot, Maud Gonne, who never returned Yeats’s affections. She repeatedly refused to marry him.

The second period, in which he turned his back on transcendentalism, was more physical and real than his earlier work. Poems such as ‘The Second Coming’, ‘The Tower’ and ‘Sailing To Byzantium’ were indicative of this period.

In 1917, Yeats married Bertha Georgina Hyde-Lees and his interest in the occult was encouraged by his wife. In this same year, he wrote the famous ‘Wild Swans At Coole’.

Yeats became a respected member of the Irish Senate in 1922 and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923. He died in 1939, a poet and playwright of world renown.

The Lake Isle of Inisfree
I will arise and go now and go to Inisfree
And a small cabin build there of clay
And wattles made
Nine bean roes will I have there a
Hive for the honey bee

And live alone in the bee loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there
For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
To where the cricket sings
Where midnight’s all a glimmer and noon
A purple glow
And evening full of the linnets wings.

I will arise and go now far always
Night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds
By the shore
While I stand on the roadway or on the
Pavements grey
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.