Patchwork shadows shifted over untended grounds and broken masonry. From the gloom of overhanging trees a tired mansion stared at Yeats through shuttered windows. All through the winding roads of “Poet’s Lane” he envisioned something more glorious—medieval, perhaps, a place displaying a coat of arms or ceremonial swords above the door. After all, his grandparents had come from England a long time ago and must have brought some curious old country things with them. He glanced back at the road that had brought them to this place and then to his parents, who sat motionless in the car. For much of the ride his mother had been strangely silent, watching the brick houses and weeping willows blur by. Her malaise seemed to deepen as she glanced from her husband’s white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel to the street signs. Tennyson, Swift, Coleridge: every street named for dead poets. Yeats’s father, Dr. William Trafford, quoted each poet as they drove, mumbling snippets of ballads and sonnets as if offering ride-along eulogies.
