O heart, O troubled heart -- this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
The grave of Irish son W.B. Yeats in Drumcliff, County Sligo, bears the poet's own words.
() Peter Matthews)
|
|
As to a dog's tail?
Just a few miles away, in County Galway, is Coole Park, where Lady Augusta Gregory had her country house and vast estate. She, too, was a founder of modern Ireland, through her collaboration with Yeats (who spent long visits happily sponging off his friend) creating a national theater, the Abbey, still one of the great companies of the world.
The woods and grounds at Coole are magnificent, and you will probably have them to yourself. Look for the Autograph Tree with names cut into it by house guests (who sometimes stayed months): Yeats, his great artist brother Jack, Sean O'Casey and George Bernard Shaw, among others.
Continuing an out-of-season Yeats pilgrimage, head just north of Sligo Town to the village of Drumcliff. Here is Yeats's grave, set in a serene, lovely churchyard next to a small and very fine Protestant church. Words live in Ireland, you'll agree, when you see the tombstone and read the world's most famous literary epitaph, written by the poet himself:
Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!
Save time to take the waters. Kilcullen's Seaweed Baths, in nearby Enniscrone, are right on the Atlantic, where they've been since 1912. The Edwardian baths are reviving, sensuous, strange and, for many, hilarious. Singles or doubles are welcome, and taking the baths with a companion is highly recommended. First, you sit in a wooden box with only your head exposed. In the box is a wooden handle by which you control steam rising from below. After you feel parboiled, slip into warm seawater and long wide slippery strands of seaweed. Have the guts to then stand up and pull the overhead chain for an ice-water climax.
Short, bright, cold days and windy clear nights in the empty and beautiful West will allow you to stare into a fire, sip a hot whiskey and decide, after all, that dreaming instead of doing is not a bad way to spend a winter holiday.
