FAMOUS IRISH POET

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23259, 31 January 1939, Page 9

FAMOUS IRISH POET

DR. W. B. YEATS DEAD NOTED WORKS RECALLED LONDON, Jan. 29 The death has occurred of Dr. W. B. Yeats, famous Irish poet and dramatist. Dr. William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin in June, 1865, his father being an artist. He studied painting for a time, but soon gave it up for literature, contributing to Irish periodicals.

In 1888 ho was advised by Oscar Wilde to try his fortune in London, where, in 1889, he issued his first hook of poems, "The Wanderings of Oisin." The genius of Yeats was recognised by It. L. Stevenson, William Morris and others. Influenced by French symbolism and the delicate art of the Decadents, he expressed the fairy lore and lingering old-world beliefs of the Irish countryside in terms of the iin de siecle. The "Celtic Twilight" essays and sketches, arid two Irish stories, "John Sherman" and "Dhoya" wore followed by his collected poems, the appearance of which in 1895 was recognised as marking the rise of a new Irish school. His best known poem is the beautiful "Lake Isle of Innisfree." Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Later he received the honour of the Goethe Plaque of the city of Frankfurt. He became ft champion'of belief in survival after death and spoke and wrote much on this question.