Yeats Country (Where William Lies) | Eire: Isle of the Saints by John Doan

“Under bare Ben Bulben’s head,

In Drumcliffe churchyard Yeat’s is laid.

An ancestor was rector there,

Long years ago, a church stands near,

By the road an ancient cross.

No marble, no conventional phrase;

On limestone quarried near the spot

By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye

On life, on death.

Horseman, pass by!”

W.B. Yeats

So ends Yeats’s last poem, Under Ben Bulben (the square top mountain overlooking Drumcliff). Although most of his work can be purchased from the merchants of Sligo, his bitter last words are etched into his gravestone for visitors to ponder as they pass by. They furnish “no conventional phrase” for the poet who led the Irish literary movement in his lifetime and is today honored as one of the twentieth century’s great poets.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) drew much of his early inspiration from ancient bardic texts and the folklore tradition of the Shanachie (Gaelic for storyteller). Fulfilling St. Patrick’s plea to his flock to write down their own tales in their own language, Yeats joined his own rhymes and meters to the magical world that surrounded him to become known in “Yeats Country” (County Sligo) as a popular “saint” of the written word.

As a boy, While visiting his grandparents at their rectory in Drumcliff, Yeat’s imagination must have been captivated by the ruins of the monastery of Eire’s warrior priest St. Columba, and by an imposing 11th century cross chiseled with inspired scenes of faith and hope from the ancient book of Scriptures. In sharp contrast Yeats’ monument seems small and filled with despair. It came to me that his last words envisioned the nearing of our world’s end as the Nazi’s invade France, a fulfillment of the scriptures of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as if saying, “if you see the Horsemen pass by, it is all over.”

Before the cold and darkness urged me away from the gravesite, I hoped that William would not mind a prayer from a passerby. My imagination glimpsed a tender man who once visited here, remembering fondly the warm summer days with his grandparents, and the lilting music of the fiddle and whistle in the evenings. As I left the churchyard I noticed bare Ben Bulben’s head aglow with the last rays of Celtic twilight as if hopefully looking up and over “Yeats country where William Lies.

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