2. Facts about Yeats
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Yeats was born 1865 in Dublin
Yeats dead in 1939 in menton, France
He went to school in Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin
He spent most of his adult life in
He is buried in Drumcliff in Co. Sligo, this is also known as
Yeats country.
• His most famous poem is ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’
• He was considered one of the greatest poets in the
twentieth century.
• Yeats was awarded a noble prize in 1923, however his greatest
works were written after he got the award.
3. The difficulty with yeats.
Yeats was recognised as a creative poet and writer from a very early age. However
this creativity had its draw backs, his early days in school were quite difficult and he
has written how he was always the bottom of his class and renowned as being a
very bad speller. These difficulties continued even after he moved to London and he
said he would have to work a day to remember an hour. These were all because he
was dyslexic but that wasn’t known for most of his life.
Yeats wrote..
“I was unfitted for school work. I had to give the whole evening to one lesson if I
was to know it. My thoughts were a great excitement, but when I tried to do
anything with them, it was like trying to pack a balloon in a shed in a high wind. I
was always near the bottom of my class, and always making excuses that but added
to my timidity; but no master was rough with me. I was known to collect moths and
butterflies and to get into no worse mischief than hiding now and again an old
tailless white rat in my coat-pocket or my desk.”
4. Williams early years.
• William was the first child of six born.
• His father john Yeats was a co-owner of a milling and shipping businesses.
• The family lived in London but would frequently visit Ireland for a good while and
stay with there family in Sligo.
• When john Yeats lost a lot of his money the family moved back to Ireland and this is
when William began to write poetry for a living.
• Yeats was always interested in Celtic Revival and talked about it in most of his poetry,
he was also very interested in Irish poetry and this inspired him with some of his
work.
• In the 1980s he met a woman called Maud gone and he eventually fell in love with
her even though she didn’t love him back.
• Maud repeatedly refused Yeats proposal so he had no choice but to give up. He
eventually met a lady called Georgiana Hyde-lees that he ended up marrying her and
had two kids called Anne and William Michael.
• Yeats became involved in politics and took part in republican campaigns, helped
organise the 1798 Rising and joined in the opposition to the celebration of Queen
Victoria’s jubilee.
5. Yeats famous poems
He wishes for the
clothes of heaven..
“Tread softly because
you tread on my
dreams.”
September 1913..
“The names that stilled
your childish play,
They have gone about
the world like wind,”
The Lake Isle Of Inisfree..
“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.”
Brown penny..
“For he would be thinking
of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten
the moon.”
The second coming..
“The blood-dimmed
tide is loosed, and
everywhere
The ceremony of
innocence is
drowned”
6. Yeats love for sligo.
For fourteen years William spent most of his summers with his grandfather
in Sligo. Williams uncle George Pollexfen home provided scenery and
landscape for Yeats imagination to run freely and this is were he wrote
about his love for Sligo. 'The Stolen Child‘"Where the wave of moonlight
glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,“.
Yeats says that his grandfather was a merchant from the town. They could
see the grey stone walls of Lissadell, where the Anglo-Irish Gore-Booth
family lived. This is one of the places were he became interested in Myths
and legends of Ireland.
7. • Lake isle of innisfree:
http://youtu.be/QLlcvQg9i6c
• He wishes for the clothes of heaven:
http://youtu.be/wejEEciHlDQ
• September 1916:
http://youtu.be/xeGe5guvSeY
• Easter 1916:
http://youtu.be/7RODe9l9SM0