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Yeats regarded his work as the close of an epoch, and the least of his later lyrics brings the sense of a great occasion. English critics have tried to claim him for their tradition, but, heard closely, his later music has that tremulous lyrical undertone which can be found in the Anglo-Irish eloquence of the eighteenth century.

Believe it or not, one of the first poets I was aware of was Yeats. I recited 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' at a verse speaking competition when I was eight or nine.

As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line.

I first came across 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' in college, with other anthologized poems by Yeats.

Despite his dodgy politics, Yeats remains an inspiration for his genius and the simple fact that the older he got, the better he wrote.

In expressing so completely his own type, Mr. Yeats presents us with the case for integrity. If we can express eventually our own scholastic mentality in verse, I believe that our art will lead us not towards, but away from, English art.

Yeats, protected to some extent by the Nationalistic movement, wrote out of a somewhat protected world, and so his work does not touch life deeply.

In these days of our new materialistic Irish state, poetry will have a harder, less picturesque task. But the loss of Yeats and all that boundless activity, in a country where the mind is feared and avoided, leaves a silence which it is painful to contemplate.

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost.