obitcheries

WB Yeats is dead.

He died in 1937 but I've only just noticed.

He wrote some quite catchy lyric poems.

One of his poems has an elegaic refrain that goes: "Never give all the heart."

The poem ends by telling the reader that the poet himself... "gave all the heart and lost."

Georgiana Yeats, his wife, is believed to have had a canniptian when she saw it.

WB Yeats is known to have been involved with devil worship at various stages of his life.

I asked Des Egan one of Ireland's leading modern poets and an authority on Yeats, could he confirm whether Yeats was involved with devil worship.

Mr Egan replied: "Ah, he wasn't really."

I had always believed devil worship was an either/or proposition.

Either you're doing it, or you're not.

In Ireland apparently there's a third option for the young diabolist about town.

You're doing it, but not really.

In one respect, Yeats' wife needn't have worried overmuch about his poem proclaiming he had given all his heart and lost.

It wasn't about her.

It was about a woman called Maud Gonne who had rejected Yeats after he gave all his heart to her.

Yeats also gave all his heart to Maud Gonne's daughter Iseult, asking her to marry him after her mother had declined.

Iseult likewise rejected him.

And finally he gave his heart to the Gonne family cat Tiddles.

Clearly, he considered everything in the Gonne household to be fair game.

Tiddles also rejected him.