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Happy Birthday Mr W B Yeats

William Butler Yeats - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

141 years ago on 13th June 1865 William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland. Yeats made his writing debut in 1885 when his first published work appeared in The Dublin University Review.

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

To celebrate this well-known, respected poet's birthday Oldpoetry Team have put together a selection of his poetry for you to enjoy.


Aedh Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
allpoetry.com/poetry/2676

A Cradle Song

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2630

A Man Young And Old - Complete

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2583

Adam's Curse

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2592

Men Improve With The Years

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2706

On Those That Hated The 'Playboy Of The Western World,' 1907

oldpoetry.com/poetry/14095

Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2716

Solomon To Sheba

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2761

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

oldpoetry.com/poetry/7460

The Ballad of Father Gilligan

oldpoetry.com/poetry/7662

The Dedication To A Book Of Stories Selected From The Irish Novelists

oldpoetry.com/poetry/17457

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree
by William Butler Yeats
oldpoetry.com/poetry/2691

The Lamentation Of The Old Pensioner

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2696

The Municipal Gallery Revisited

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2712

The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2813

The Old Stone Cross

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2722

The Rose Tree

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2822

The Song Of The Old Mother

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2828

The Spirit Medium

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2765

The Stolen Child

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2769

The Wild Old Wicked Man

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2884

Towards Break Of Day

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2861

When You Are Old

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2881

The Rose in the Deeps of his Heart

oldpoetry.com/poetry/8498

The Second Coming

oldpoetry.com/poetry/2825

The land of faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
Land of Heart’s Desire.

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Comments


  • RonPrice
    July 10, 2007

    Edit | Reply
    THE EXPERIENCE OF CULTIVATED MEN

    The great poet is more type than man, more passion than type. A poet always writes of his personal life and, in his finest work, out of his tragedy. Art springs from distress. For the poet there is always a phantasmagoria, a delirium, an intoxication, a chaos of ideas, often from reading. The process of creating out of deep personal feeling is one of rebirth. As the poet labours to complete his work he is reborn as an idea, something intended, complete. It is in this that the poet’s power lies. By the continuous exercise of his craftsmanship and inspiration, nature and society grows more intelligible. Part of the poet’s creative power becomes intelligible as well. In the process the poet touches the essence, the spirit, of humanity. And this touching is significantly due to the poet's sense of responsibility to his community--the polarity balanced by his freedom.
    -Ron Price with thanks to Stephen Coote, W.B. Yeats: A Life, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1997.

    With no pretensions to being great,

    I write so much of this for them,

    as Yeats did so much and so often,

    so often--for his community, that

    has been so much of what he was,

    in mind, body, soul. Yes, I find,

    too, William, that community provides

    the compass of my imaginings. Whether

    in love or in utter frustration, in joy

    or in weariness, or looking out from

    behind my mask, for some aesthetic,

    artistic, completenessor all the world

    is still a stage and all the men and women

    merely players and we have the mask of our

    so many selves,so many necessary, needed,

    selves. With those desires for intoxication

    and delight from the memory of old emotions,

    with all the uncounted flavours of old

    experience, emotions deepened by time and

    cultivated men, constantly reanimating

    received images of delight in my daily life.

    Ron Price
    24 May 1999
    (Revised for: The Old Poetry Website)
    11/7/07
    That’s enough for now!


  • Ahkam Moderators member
    April 17, 2007

    Edit | Reply

    thank you Oldpoetry

    William Butler Yeats is one of the Great poets of all times. His poetry includes a wide verity of subjects. The best of his poetic attributes is that he always uses very simple words to explain some very deep ideas. His poem, ‘For Anne Gregory’ is my favorite poem. In the end of the poem he concludes that…
    'I heard an old religious man
    But yesternight declare
    That he had found a text to prove
    That only God, my dear,
    Could love you for yourself alone
    And not your yellow hair.'
    Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement.
    I believe that his birthday is 13th of June, so it’s more then a month yet to say Happy birthday to him.
    By the way I am one day older than him, mine birthday is 12th of June.
    Thank you oldpoetry for the birthday reminder of Mr. Yeats