“The Pilgrimage Along the Drogheda Road”: W. B. Yeats, George Barker, and the Idea of Ireland

Abstract

W. B. Yeats spent the month of September 1935 quietly at Riversdale, his Dublin home, working on the compilation of The Oxford Book of Modem Verse. On the evening of the 8 September he wrote to Lady Dorothy Wellesley enclosing a draft of the Introduction he had written for the selection of her poetry she was preparing. He then added a postscript describing his day’s activities:

I am tired, I have spent the day reading Ezra Pound for the Anthology — a single strained attitude instead of passion, the sexless American professor for all his violence.

I delight in a young poet called George Barker (Faber & Faber) a lovely subtle mind and a rhythmical invention comparable to Gerard Hopkins … (LDW 23)