Ireland, from coast to coast
All pictures © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte, 2002-2018
William Butler Yeats @150
William Butler Yeats: Irish prose writer, dramatist and poet; Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. 1865-1939; compiled the Oxford Book of Modern Verse. My favourite Irish author would have been 150 years today. Ireland, myself included, celebrates a man so talented, his words still touches people today. Two years ago, and on my birthday, I visited Yeats’s grave in Drumcliffe, County Sligo, Ireland. Because he was one of my favourites since my teenage years, it was a bucket-list moment that was finally realized! I wished I was in Sligo this weekend, but I’m sure I will go back before too long, especially since his house, Thoor Ballylee, has finally been opened to the public, something many fans had been asking for a very long time.
Kick-Ass Ireland
Some days I sit still and think about how my life became a dream full-circle. There’s William Butler Yeats, James Joyce and Brendan Behan. Seamus Heaney, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett and George Bernard Shaw. The Lake Isle of Innisfree, Land of Heart’s Desire and Yeats’s grave. Dubliners, Ulysses and Bloomsday. The mountains, lakes, Dublin, Sligo and the Shannon. Brú na Boinne, Corcaigh, Beara, Daingean Uí Chúis, Zú Bhaile Átha Cliath, craic agus ceol. Brian Ború, Michael Collins, Theobald Wolfe Tone and Daniel O’Connell. Seven hundred years of cruelty, yet still able to endure hard times. Writers, dancers, taps, tin whistles and uilleann pipes. Books, almighty libraries and small bookshops selling secrets. Friendships gained, lost and renewed. New alliances forged in foothills and strengthened on mountain tops. “You, the Irish” becoming “Us…
12 years of poetry, books & dreams
12 years ago, on this very day, I moved to Ireland. Sometimes it still feels like a dream within a dream, of seeing, hearing and feeling new stories, of meeting wise and old, playful and young. Thinking back, I always have William Butler Yeats in the back of my mind. He is definitely my favourite Irish poet, although it would be an injustice not mentioning the fantastic work of Seamus Heaney, James Joyce’s Ulysses and many others blessed by the Irish gift of the gab. Below are just a few of my favourite poems by Yeats, so do enjoy!
The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again;…
Orderly William Butler Yeats
When You Are Old, by William Butler Yeats
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep. How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face. And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead, And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. (William Butler Yeats) © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner…