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  • Section 8: Blessed Bridget O'Coole
Typescript journal entry with manuscript edits

Cancer

title page of book with illustration of tree

Coole

typed draft of poem with handwritten corrections
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) “Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931” typescript draft 1932 Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature

"Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931"

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931” typescript draft
1932

Yeats completed this last elegy for Gregory three months before her death in May 1932. In the poem, which Yeats initially titled “Coole. 1932,” Gregory is already off stage, heard with her stick moving painfully in a room above. The poem anticipates both her passing and the destruction of Coole itself. These are figured as signs of coming chaos and a loss of tradition, both for Yeats himself and by implication for Ireland and the wider world. Fearing for his own future creativity, Yeats imagines the “high horse” of poetry now being “riderless,” while the swans on Coole lake “drift” on a “darkening flood.” The opening stanza, describing the river that linked Coole with Thoor Ballylee, deftly celebrates the creative connection and interdependency that marked the long friendship and collaborations between Yeats and Gregory.

: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature

: William Butler Yeats collection of papers

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Items in Section 8: Blessed Bridget O'Coole

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  • Black and white photo of Lady Gregory standing in a field, wearing all black

    Section 8: Blessed Bridget O'Coole Introduction

  • Typescript journal entry with manuscript edits

    Cancer

  • typed draft of poem with handwritten corrections

    "Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931"

  • title page of book with illustration of tree

    Coole

  • Typed will codicil with annotations

    Codicil to Will

  • Mansucript letter from Lady Gregory to W.B. Yeats on Coole Park letter head

    Farewell letter to W. B. Yeats

  • black and white photograph of a tree trunk with carved names

    Autograph Tree

  • Black and white photo of Lady Gregory standing in a field, wearing all black

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