Thoor Ballylee and the Tor Tower

To be carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee

I, the poet William Yeats,
With old mill boards 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.

Yeats restored an old Irish tower for his wife, and then
Jeffers built a stone tower for his.

One excellent example of how Una Jeffers influenced the work of her husband Robinson Jeffers is the trail that led from Una’s pride in her Irish heritage through the Irish poet W. B. Yeats to the construction of Hawk Tower and the creative explosion that stonework catalyzed.

Una may not have greatly influenced her husband’s craft as a poet, but we can see how she may have guided Jeffers’ mind in less explicitly literal ways.

 

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