Illustrated
below is Coole House in which Lady
Augusta Gregory  entertained
many of the most eminent literary figures of the time, including
William Butler
Yeates, George Russell and Sean O'Casey. Lady Gregory and Yeats
were leading figures in the Irish literary revival. In the grounds
can be seen the autograph tree, a huge beech tree on which is carved
although now almost illegible the names of many of her famous guests.
The house was demolished in
1941 its end came more swiftly than Yeates envisaged when in 1927
he wrote the melancholy poem below.
W B Yeates.
Here, traveller, scholor, poet, take your stand
When all these rooms and passages are gone,
When nettles wave upon a shapeless mound
And saplings root among the broken stone,
And delicate - eyes bent upon the ground,
Back turned upon the brightness of the sun
And all the sensuality of the shade-
A moment's memory to the lauralled head.
Although the house is gone the
grounds remain much the same, the swans on the lake are probably
descended from the ones that Yeats commemorated in his poem "The
Wild Swans of Coole." |
