Death Of W. B. Yeats

Northern Advocate, 30 January 1939, Page 8

Death Of W. B. Yeats

(Received 2.30 p.m.) LONDON. January 29,

The death has occurred of Mr W. B Yeats, famous Irish poet and dramatist aged 74.

Yeats, whose father was an artist, studied painting for a time, but soon gave it up for literature, contributing to Irish periodicals. In 1888, he was advised by Oscar Wilde to try his fortune in London, where, in 1889, he issued his first book of poems, “The Wanderings of Oisin,” which awakened new interest in the Celtic revival. In his works, the genius of which was recognised by experts, he express|ed the fairy lore and lingering oldI world beliefs of the Irish countryside. ! Essays and sketches and two Irish I stories, “John Sharmau” and “Dhoya,” were followed by his collected poems, I the appearance of which in 1895 was I recognised as marking the rise of a i new Irish school.

His best-known poem is the beautiful “Lake Isle of Innisfree,” while the volume, “The Wind Among the Reeds,” holds some of his finest poems. His later verse became ascetic and intellectual, in strange contrast with his early lyrics. I It was to Yeats that the new Irish drama owed its initiation, and his was j the first suggestion from which grew ! the Irish Literary Theatre. The poet was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, and later 'i he received the honour oi the Goethe I Plaque of tfie City of Frankfurt.