William Butler Yeats

Yeats, William Butler (1865–1939), Irish poet and dramatist, leader of the Celtic Renaissance in Ireland and one of the world's greatest lyric poets. Nationalism was a major element in his early poetry, such as The Wanderings of Oisin (1889), which drew on Irish legend. Yeats cofounded (1898) Dublin's Irish Literary Theatre, later the Abbey Theatre. His mature poetic works, often symbolic and mystical, treated universal themes. They include The Wild Swans at Coole (1917), The Tower (1928), and Last Poems (1940). Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1923.