Birthday Wishes to William Butler Yeats!

I hope to in the near future devise a way on my blog to celebrate the birthday of prolific writers.  I think I have been exceedingly stuck on Poe as of late, so here is a brief respite….

Yeats late in life

William Butler Yeats (June 13 1865-January 28 1939) was born in Dublin, Ireland.  He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.  He was an acclaimed poet and dramatist.  The Nobel Prize committee described his work as “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of the whole nation”.   Some of more famous works were The Tower and The Land of Heart’s Desire. 

My personal favorite by Yeats (and honestly probably the only piece I have read) is The Second Coming.  An excerpt of this piece was used in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and has been viewed by critics as an analysis of post World War I pessimism and European moral crisis, most notably the rise of the Fascist and Nazi governments and sever economic crisis.

For a complete version of this poem, visit www.poetry-archive.com/y/the_second_coming.html