William B. Yeats and his Boston Connections

Photo Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation

W. B. Yeats, Ireland’s influential poet and writer, born in Dublin on June 13, 1865, had a longstanding connection to Boston dating back to his early days as a poet.  The Boston Pilot, a weekly Irish Catholic newspaper, is said to have published his first poem on August 6, 1887, when Yeats had just turned 22.

It was titled was "How Ferencz Renyi Kept Silent,” in which he compared the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-49 with political circumstances in 1880s Ireland.

We, too, have seen our bravest and our best

To prison go, and mossy ruin rest,

Where houses once whitened vale and mountain crest,

Therefore, O nation of the bleeding breast,

Libations from the Hungary of the West.

Yeats’ found his way into The Pilot thanks to its editor, John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-90), who was also a poet of note as well as an activist leader in pursuing Irish freedom.

Many years later,  Yeats was feted at a luncheon in Boston on October 6, 1911 by local literary and Irish leaders.  The luncheon was hosted by the John Boyle O’Reilly Club, a literary club founded after O’Reilly’s untimely death in 1890.  

 According to The Boston Globe,   Yeats paid special tribute to O’Reilly in his remarks, saying in part:

“I never met Boyle O’Reilly, but, as far as I can remember, the first poem of mine that was ever paid for appeared in the Boston Pilot under is editorship.  I don’t remember how I came to send my poems to him, but rumor used to come back to Ireland of his romantic and gallant personality and we all knew of his adventurous life.  Probably it was old John O’Leary, the Fenian, who got me to send them, for he had told me much of O’Reilly.”

Yeats visited Boston several times, including a visit in December 1903 when he gave a lecture at Harvard University  entitled “Poetry, Old Times and New.”  According to The Boston Globe, “Mr. Yeats attacked modern poetry and the modern theatre most severely, and he made an appeal for the return to the poetry of the old days.  ‘The modern theatre is only for the rich and stupid,’ was one of his pointed remarks.”

His longest trip to Boston was in fall 1911 when Yeats was was part of an American tour in to promote the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s new national theatre.  The Boston visit included presentations of J.M. Synge’s plays, including the controversial Playboy of the Western World.

Boston College has a significant W.B. Yeats collection at John J. Burns Library.

In 1988, the W.B. Yeats Foundation was formed by Professor James Flannery at Emory University in Atlanta.

For details on cultural activities in greater Boston, visit IrishBoston.org.  For information on Boston's Irish heritage, visit IrishHeritageTrail.com.