William Butler Yeates, 1865 - 1939 was born in Sandymount, County Dublin, Ireland. An Irish poet and dramatist, Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature - becoming the first Irish man to be honoured. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the nobel prize.

‘Two Songs Of A Fool’

I

A speckled cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And sleep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
As I look up to providence.

I start out of my sleep to think
Some day I may forget
Their food and drink;
Or, the house door left unshut,
The hare may run till it’s found
The horn’s sweet note and the tooth of the
hound.

I bear a burden that might well try
Men that do all by rule,
And what can I
That am a wandering witted fool
But pray to God that He ease
My great responsibilities?

II

I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire
The speckled cat slept on my knee;
We never thought to enquire
Where the brown hare might be,
And whether the door were shut.
Who knows how she drank the wind
Stretched up on two legs from the mat,
Before she had settled her mind
To drum with her heel and to leap:
Had I but awakened from sleep
And called her name and she heard,
It may be, and had not stirred,
That now, it may be, has found
The horns’ sweet note and the tooth of the
hound.