Although I can see him still
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies; 
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes 
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be 
To write for my own race
And the reality; 
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat, 
The insolent unreproved
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer, 
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries 
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise 
And great Art beaten down.
 

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began, 
In scorn of this audience
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, 'before I am old 
I shall have written him one 
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.'

Frontispiece portrait of young Yeats "From a charcoal drawing by John S. Sargent, R.A."

William Butler Yeats, born in 1865, was an Irish poet of the 20th century who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. Yeats played an integral part in the Irish Literary Revival during his lifetime, and he helped establish the Abbey Theater in Dublin with the support of his friend Lady Gregory. 

Jack Butler Yeats, was a painter, poet, and writer.  He is considered the most important Irish artist of the 20th century, and is the younger brother of William Butler Yeats.  In collaboration with the artist Pamela Colman Smith, Jack llustrated a series of broad sheets for each month of 1902, which were published and sold by Elkin Mathews in London.  The Jack B. Yeats Broadsheet Collection is part of the Walter & Martha Leuba Collection of Artists Prints, and is located in Archives & Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh.

Robert Gregory, Charging Unicorn, 2 1/4 inch diameter block device.  First published by W. B. Yeats in Discoveries, 1907, and republished as the frontispiece in The Wild Swans at Coole, 1917.

Elizabeth Yeats, born in 1868, was the sister of William Butler Yeats. During the early years of her life, Elizabeth worked at Kelmscott Press with her sister Lily Yeats, where she acquired the skills of book production. These skills made her an integral part of the Dun Emer Press in Dublin, which she helped to establish. In 1908, Elizabeth left Dun Emer Press and established her own press, The Cuala Press. The press was the only Arts and Crafts press directed by women. The Cuala Press specialized in printing books and poems by authors of the Irish Literary Revival, including William Butler Yeats. Elizabeth died in 1940, and six years after her death the press closed. In 1969, the press was reopened by the children of William Butler Yeats. 

Title page of The Wild Swans at Coole, 1917