W. B. Yeats— A Generation Later

Abstract

One of the things I most regret is that W. B. Yeats did not live for, at least, a year longer than he did. Had he lived through the autumn of 1939 he would have seen his divided fellow-countrymen re-uniting for the purpose of declaring Irish neutrality in regard to the second great war. Partition or no Partition, neutrality was a clinching re-affirmation of the Irish nationhood in which he believed and for the recognition of which he had helped to fight all his life long. He accepted the idea that a distinctive cultural heritage implies distinctive nationhood.

University Review (Dublin) in, no. 8 (1966) 3–14.