Tributes paid to W.B. Yeats on Yeats Day

People across Ireland and Leitrim celebrated Yeats Days on Tuesday, June 13. Social media users took to platforms to remember and pay tributes to the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats on his birthday by posting their favourite quotes from his memorable work.

This year also marks 100 years since W.B. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for literature. “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”, The Embassy of Ireland tweeted to mark the day of significance.

Some other lines shared from his poetry included: “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.” - from The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

A reference to Glencar Waterfall from his poem ‘The Stolen Child’ was also among the many tributes on the day - “Where the wandering water gushes From the hills above Glen-Car, In pools among the rushes That scarce could bathe a star, We seek for slumbering trout And whispering in their ears Give them unquiet dreams; Leaning softly out From ferns that drop their tears Over the young streams. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

Yeats was born in 1865 and passed away in 1939, aged 73. He will go down as one of Ireland’s best-known and beloved poets thanks to his influential writing. Yeats Day is celebrated yearly to remember one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature.