On this day, 160 years ago, on June 13, 1865 (May 20, 1865), Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats was born. William Butler Yeats (June 13, 1865 - January 28, 1939), Irish poet, playwright and essayist, famous mystic, leader of the "Irish Renaissance" and one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre. Yeats' poetry evolved into a unique style influenced by Romanticism, aestheticism, mysticism, symbolism and metaphysics. Yeats's art represents the epitome of the transition from traditional to modern English poetry. Yeats was born in Sandymount, not far from Dublin, the capital of Ireland, the son of a portrait painter. The Yeats family is a very artistic family. Yeats's brother Jack later became a famous painter, and his two sisters Elizabeth and Susan participated in the famous "Arts and Crafts Movement". In middle school, Yeats read a lot of British writers such as Shakespeare and discussed with writers and artists who were much older than him. After graduating from high school, he began to write poetry. In 1885, Yeats published his first poem and an essay in the Dublin University Review. From 1884 to 1886, he studied at the MetropolitanSchoolofArt, which is now the predecessor of the Irish National Academy of Fine Arts and Design. Yeats was a leader of the Irish Renaissance in the 20th century. He was an early representative of Symbolist poetry in England and had an important influence on the development of English poetry in the 20th century. Yeats's history is the history of Ireland at the turn of the century, and his poetry integrates his personal history with the Irish history of that period. Yeats was not only one of the decision-makers of the Abbey Theatre, but also served as a senator in the Irish Parliament. He took these social positions very seriously and was known as a hard worker in the Irish Senate. Politics is a major theme in his poems; love is also a lifelong theme for Yeats. " "When You Are Old" is a poem written by Yeats in 1893, a passionate and sincere love poem dedicated to his girlfriend Mao De Gang. The poem is concise in language, but rich in emotion. Thirteen Chinese translations of the poem have been widely circulated before and after, and Zhao Zhao later composed it into music, which is widely circulated in China. "When You Are Old" When you are old, white-headed, sleepy, and dozing by the fire, take down this poem and read it slowly, recalling the softness of your eyes in the past, recalling their thick shadows of yesteryear; how many people love you when you are young and cheerful, adoring your beauty, false or true, only one loves your pilgrim soul, the painful wrinkles of your aging face; hang down your head, and by the red-lit stove, mournfully whisper the passing of love, which paces slowly on the mountain overhead, hiding its face among the stars. Some people only know that the poem "When You Are Old" is touching, but behind it, there is what a sad love tragedy. On January 30, 1889, at the age of twenty-three, Yeats met for the first time the beautiful actress Maud Gon. She was twenty-two years old, the daughter of a British colonel in Ireland, and had recently inherited a large inheritance after the death of her father. Maud Gon was not only beautiful and slim, but she began to sympathize with the Irish people after feeling the tragic situation of the Irish people being oppressed by the British. She resolutely gave up the social life of the upper class in Dublin and threw herself into the movement for Irish national independence. This added a special halo to Maud Gon in Yeats' mind. Yeats's opinion of Maud? Gunn fell in love at first sight, but the young Yeats felt "immature and unaccomplished", so he refrained from confessing to her, despite the torment of his love affair. Maud had been estranged from Yeats, and in July 1891, Yeats misunderstood the message of a letter she had sent to him, thinking she had made a hint of love to herself, and immediately ran excitedly to propose to Maud for the first time. She refused, saying she could not marry him, but wished to maintain a friendship with Yeats. Maud had since refused Yeats's advances and married an Irish officer in 1903. Yeats waited, and Maud rejected Yeats's proposal again after Maud's husband died. Afterwards, Yeats proposed to Mao De Gang's daughter Isabella. After being rejected, Yeats finally stopped this hopeless idea. But in fact, Yeats still couldn't forget Mao De Gang. In the last months of his life, he also wrote to Mao De Gang, asking her to come out for tea, but was still rejected. Moreover, Mao De Gang also firmly refused to attend his funeral. Yeats's pain and misfortune about Mao De Gang's hopeless love led Yeats to write many poems about Mao De Gang. Over the decades, from various angles, Mao De Gang Gunn continued to inspire Yeats; sometimes passionate love, sometimes desperate resentment, and more often the complex tension between love and hate. Yeats won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for "expressing the soul of a whole nation for his highly artistic and inspired poetry." In 1934, he shared the Gutenberg Prize for Poetry with Rudyard Kipling. Yeats was called "the greatest poet of our time" by the poet Eliot.