{"id":1093,"date":"2026-06-20T04:13:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T04:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2026-06-20T04:13:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T04:13:58","slug":"may-these-characters-remain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/?p=1093","title":{"rendered":"May these characters remain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Happy belated birthday to William Butler Yeats (June 13), my earliest and chiefest poetic influence. And a happy return to the blog after a year’s hiatus. In honor of the occasion, I have embedded a few photos of his tower, Thoor Ballyee, where he and his wife George spent their summers (it was apparently too cold and damp in winter). I made a pilgrimage on my recent trip to Ireland. The tower was restored and opened for visitors in 2015, following a six-year closure. It is now maintained by a group of mostly local volunteers, The Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society. Unfortunately for me, the tourist season officially begins just after Easter, and I arrived a week too early to see inside the tower, but the environs were inspiring enough. The landscape is largely unspoiled. The nearest town of any size is Gort (which is Gaelic for \u201cfield\u201d\u2014so that should tell you what kind of place it is).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m embarrassed to say that although I am well familiar with his poetry, I\u2019m remarkably uninformed about many aspects of his life. For starters, I associate Yeats with Sligo, near where my grandmother grew up. I didn\u2019t get there on this trip (great excuse for another excursion!). But Thoor Ballylee is in fact on the outskirts of Galway\u2014just a short ride from Derrybrien, where my grandfather grew up. He came to America in 1926, so he would’ve been in the area when Yeats was spending summers at the tower. I doubt they would’ve crossed paths, but it is an intriguing possibility! Yeats was ultimately laid to rest near Ben Bulben in Sligo, but he found a home in the Galway area. In fact, Coole Park is very near the tower\u2014Yeats fans will understand the significance. Also, I was a bit surprised to see that the tower is not round, but square. In fact, most of the towers in Ireland (at least the ones designed as dwellings) are square, and are known as tower-houses. There are also tall pencil-shaped towers, but those were apparently clock towers attached to a monastery. But I digress!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a coursing brook right at the base of the tower\u2014in fact, it\u2019s said that George would sit on the window sill (visible in the photo) with a fishing pole to catch trout. There\u2019s also a picturesque low bridge with several stone arches. When you see the tower in person, you suddenly understand lines such as \u201cUnder my window-ledge the waters race,\u201d and \u201cAnd heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower, \/ And under the arches of the bridge.\u201d This brook at some point dives underground and reappears to feed the pond at Coole Park, as mentioned in \u201cCoole Park and Ballylee.\u201d I did not see any wild swans by the tower, but I certainly saw some in Galway city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone familiar with the poem \u201cTo Be Carved On A Stone At Thoor Ballylee\u201d will be pleased to know that the poem really does appear carved on a stone on the wall of the tower. It\u2019s a bit hard to read in the photo. For those unfamiliar, it reads:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I, the poet William Yeats
With old millboards and sea-green slates
And smithy work from the Gort forge
Restored this tower for my wife George
And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Numerous prior drafts of this poem exist in his collected letters. Early versions threatened a curse upon anyone who tampered with the tower; the final version is considerably less menacing. I love the fact that he considered this poem an integral design element from early on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tower is worth a visit for diehard fans, but be aware: it\u2019s sort of in the middle of nowhere, so you\u2019ll need a car to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy belated birthday to William Butler Yeats (June 13), my earliest and chiefest poetic influence. And a happy return to the blog after a year’s hiatus. In honor of the occasion, I have embedded a few photos of his tower, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabrielspera.com\/the-first-circle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}