WB YEATS (1865 - 1939)
DRUMCLIFFE, COUNTY SLIGO
Ireland’s greatest poet always considered Sligo, his mother’s native county and where he spent many childhood summers, his ‘spiritual’ home. Yeats was inspired time and time again by its idyllic landscape, including the mesmeric ‘table mountain’ Benbulben: “Now they ride the wintry dawn, Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.”
Although the poet died in France in 1939, his remains were repatriated to Drumcliffe Churchyard, Sligo (where his great-grandfather had been rector) in 1948. The limestone headstone at his grave in the leafy cemetery, itself nestled under Benbulben, shows Yeats’ iconic self-penned epitaph:
Cast a cold Eye.
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!