Heavens' Embroidered Cloths

Book excerpt: As a boy Yeats dramatized himself as a sage, magician or poet, and when fellow poet Katharine Tynan first met him in 1885 he seemed to her all dreams and gentleness. His lifelong interest in the myths, legends and folk history of his native Ireland, his fascination with magic and the occult, the theatre, language, politics, love and friendship are all prevalent in this collection of poems. He was a visionary poet and uses symbols to evoke rather than to describe, and in 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The book is illustrated by a range of predominantly Irish painters, including the poet's younger brother, Jack B. Yeats.