W.B. Yeats, Ireland

I loved Yeats as a young man.  I was a young man. He was eternal.  Described as the “Last Romantic”.  He was a poet of Irish legend, then political poet, but too conservative for his Suffragette Maude Maud Gonne  He was a mystic who wanted a Celtic mystic club. One of the Anglo Irish Ascendancy, a protestant Irishman, he stood against the English dominance.  In Draperstown we saw Yeats written on the walls. He was in Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland.  He haunted Dublin. Wherever we turned he was there.  Sometimes there were even statues of him. Quotations of his poems adorned the sides of vans. In the Long Hall at Trinity we saw his signed “Fiddler of Dooney”.  To this day he is that much loved.
The Coming of Wisdom With Time, by W.B. Yeats
   Though leaves are many, the root is one;
   Through all the lying days of my youth
    I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun,
    Now I may wither into the truth.

We visited his grave at Drumcliffe. He’d been happy in the Sligo area, the mountains, sea and wild. It was good to re visit the Yeats of my youth. I like him even more  now that I am an older man.