W. B. Yeats

1865–1939 · Ireland

Moved from Celtic dreaminess to hard modern music across fifty years.

Yeats began in the lush symbolism of the Irish Literary Revival and spent his career stripping it back, a rare example of a major poet becoming more modern with age.

He co-founded the Abbey Theatre, served in the Irish Senate, and received the Nobel Prize in 1923.

Style

Early work: long musical lines, folklore, mist and lake water.
Late work: bare syntax, hard consonants, brutal clarity.
Recurring symbols — towers, gyres, birds — built into a private system.