William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century. He was born in 1865 and he died in 1939. Throughout his life, he also established the Abbey theatre and served as a public Irish senator for a number of years. William Butler Yeats is well known for being a driving force behind the Irish literary revival. William Butler Yeats poem appears many times in the top 100 Irish poems list.