Y Cards Flashcards
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
Yeats is a major player on the GRE, and for the reason all the poems below are well worth studying. Of particular note is “The Second Coming” which appears on the exam with some frequency.
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure of Anglo-Irish (Protestant) ancestry, brother of the artist Jack Butler Yeats and son of John Butler Yeats. Yeats was one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival and was co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. Yeats also served as an Irish Senator. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee described as “his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation”.
