Poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was the first Irish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1923). A key participant in Modernism and the Irish literary renaissance, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.
Early in his career Yeats was influenced by the Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite movements, and he often evoked a legendary and supernatural Ireland in his poems. As his writing matured, he blended Irish nationalism with pride in Ireland’s past and developed a complex philosophy about the cyclical nature of history. His best work, which he wrote late in life, combined passion and precision with powerful symbols, strong rhythm, and lucid diction.
Yeats’s best-known poems include “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (1889), “Easter, 1916” (1916), “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1917), “The Second Coming” (1920), and “Sailing to Byzantium” (1927).