On the inspiration of guides and sages
In an intriguing and lyrical short poem, the Nobel Prize-winning, Anglo-Irish, Celtic-revivalist poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) in The Seven Sages grazes over the passing on of tangible wisdom, humility and narrative from one generation to the next. In the poem Yeats published in 1933 after the bloody Civil War in Ireland, he sets up…