Political Awakening

Three public controversies moved him to anger and to poetry: the first over the hounding of Parnell ("To a Shade"); the second over John Synge's 1907 play The Playboy of the Western World, an unsentimental study of Irish character; and the third over the Lane pictures ("September 1913"). In each case, the cause for which he fought was defeated by representatives of the Roman Catholic middle class; at last, bitterly turning his back on Ireland, Yeats moved to England.

Then came the Easter Rising, which was mounted by members of the class and religion that had so long opposed him. Persuaded by Gonne (whose estranged husband was one of the executed leaders of the rising) that "tragic dignity had returned to Ireland," Yeats himself returned. To mark his new commitment, he refurbished, occupied, and renamed "Thoor Ballylee" the Norman tower on Lady Gregory's land that was to become one of the central symbols of his later poetry. Yeats married Georgie Hyde-Lees in 1917. In 1922 he was appointed a senator of the recently established Irish Free State and served until 1928, playing an active part not only in promoting the arts but also in general political affairs, in which he supported the views of the Protestant landed class.

Yeats won the Nobel prize in 1923. He died in January 1939, leaving behind a body of verse unequalled in variety and power.