William Butler Yeats

On June 13 1865 William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin Ireland. From the start Yeats had artistic influences, due to the fact that his father Jack Butler Yeats was a noted Irish painter. He had no formal education until he was eleven, at that time he started at the Godolphin Grammar School in Hammer*censored*h England and later he enrolled in Erasmus Smith High School in Dublin. Throughout his schooling he was considered disappointing student, his studies were inconsistent, he was prone to day dreaming, and poor at sports. In 1884 Yeats found his way to the Metropolitan School for the Arts, here he met a poet by the name of George Russell. Yeats and Russell sheared the same dreams, visions, and the enthusiasm for them. Russell and Yeats soon founded the Dublin Hermetic Society for the purpose of conducting magical experiments. They promoted their idea that "whatever great poets had affirmed in there finest moments was the nearest we could come to an authoritative religion and that their mythology and their spirits of wind and water were but literal truth." This sparked Yeats’s interest in the study of the occult. After his experience in the hermetic society he joined the Rosicrucians, Madam H.P. Blavavtsky’s Theosophical Society, and MacGregors Mather’s Order of the Dawn. Yeats consulted spiritualists frequently and engaged in the ritual of conjuring the Irish Gods. The occult research Yeats made was apparent in his poetry. The occult was a source of images to use in his poems, and evedence of this is in all of his works. In1885 Yeats met John O’Leary an Irish Nationalist and Fenian leader. O’Leary played a large role on getting Yeats’s his work first published in The Dublin University Review and directing Yeats’s attention to native Irish sources for inspiration. The influence of O’Leary caused Yeats to take up the Irish writer’s cause. England was trying to destroy all Irish literature in an attempt to anglicize Ireland through a ban on the Gaelic language. O’Leary’s nationalism and opposition to violence impressed many people including Yeats. These views helped shape political views that Yeats would hold for the rest of his life. In 1889Yeats met Maude Gonne, a woman he loved unrequitedly for the rest of his life. Yeats asked Gonne to marry him many times but she always turned him down. Gonne was an Irish patriot and an inspiration to...

... middle of paper ...

...thorn-trees By the waters. I herd the old, old men say, ‘All that’s beautiful drifts away Like the waters.’ This poem was written some time between 1904 and 1910, at this time Yeats would have been between 39 and 45 years old. When Yeats wrote this he probably started to see changes in himself, and when he saw old men he realized how close he was to becoming one of them himself. Because of the subject, I find it strange that e used a lyrical style of writing. To a Squirrel at Kyle-na-no Come play with me; Why should you run Through the shaking tree As though I’d a gun To strike you dead? When all I would do Is scratch your head And let you go. Yeats wrote this poem between 1919 and 1928. I think that this poem has more meaning than just wanting to play with a squirrel. At the time it was written there was some major industrialization going on, so that leads me to believe that the squirrel represents all of nature, and he is trying to enjoy nature. The fact that the squirrel runs away shows that nature knows of mans destructiveness and it doesn’t trust man. What I think Yeats is trying to say is that he really doesn’t agree with industrialization, but again he uses a lyrical style.