The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats

Por­trait of William But­ler Yeats by John Singer Sar­gent, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It’s a hap­py trend. Increas­ing­ly, we’re see­ing muse­ums launch­ing dynam­ic online exhi­bi­tions to accom­pa­ny their exhi­bi­tions on the ground. In the past, we high­light­ed the Tate Mod­ern’s panoram­ic tour of Mark Rothko’s work. And now we point you to The Life and Work of William But­ler Yeats, an online exhi­bi­tion cre­at­ed by The Nation­al Library of Ire­land. When you enter the tour, you can scan through 200 arti­facts & man­u­scripts and “attend” three in-depth tuto­ri­als explor­ing the evo­lu­tion of three major poems (‘Sail­ing to Byzan­tium’, ‘Leda and the Swan’ and ‘Nine­teen Hun­dred and Nine­teen’). You can also lis­ten to Yeats, one of Ire­land’s tow­er­ing poets, recit­ing his famous poem ‘The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free.’ To lis­ten, click “Areas” on the bot­tom nav­i­ga­tion, then click “Verse and Vision” on the cen­ter menu, and then the audio will begin to play. You can read the text of the poem here. Final­ly, you’ll find more Yeats poems in our Free Audio Book col­lec­tion.