William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society

William Butler Yeats (June 13 1865 – January 28 1939) ), the greatest lyric poet in English in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, remains a man of enormous contradictions. The nominal leader of the Irish literary renaissance, he spent most of his adult life living in London; a quiet, sensitive soul, he was a political firebrand who at times seemed to flirt with fascism; a sometime dabbler in the occult, he was nevertheless a clear-eyed rationalist when it came to literary matters. Poet, playwright, political activist, and banner-carrier for Irish writers generally, Yeats is perhaps best remembered for his very late poetry, which was filled with richly humane meditations on human age and frailty.