Poet
W. B. Yeats
Irish poet · 1865–1939
When You Are OldThe Lake Isle of InnisfreeHe Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
W. B. Yeats, Ireland's greatest poet and a Nobel laureate, spent a lifetime turning unrequited love — most famously for the activist Maud Gonne — into permanent poems. "When You Are Old" asks her to imagine, decades later, the one man who "loved the pilgrim soul in you."
His early work is misty Celtic romance; his later work is some of the hardest, clearest poetry of the twentieth century. Poems published through 1928 are in the public domain in the US.
6 poems by W. B. Yeats
Full text, free to read — all in the public domain.
- When You Are OldWhen you are old and grey and full of sleep,…12 lines
- He Wishes for the Cloths of HeavenHad I the heavens' embroidered cloths,…8 lines
- An Irish Airman Foresees His DeathI know that I shall meet my fate…16 lines
- The Lake Isle of InnisfreeI will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,…12 lines
- The Second ComingTurning and turning in the widening gyre…22 lines
- The Song of Wandering AengusI went out to the hazel wood,…24 lines