William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), son of portrait painter John Butler Yeats, was captivated from youth by Celtic mythology, esoteric mysticism, and unrequited love for Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne. Together with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn, Yeats founded Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1904, serving as the cultural engine of Irish independence.

Unlike many poets whose inspiration fades with age, Yeats's poetic powers deepened steadily into his fifties and sixties. In Easter, 1916, he commemorated the executed leaders of the Dublin uprising ('All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born'). In The Second Coming (1919), he foresaw the catastrophic violence of the 20th century ('Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world'). Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 and serving as a Senator of the Irish Free State, Yeats was buried beneath Ben Bulben in Drumcliffe.