A road trip through Yeats country

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The imagery in many of his poems was lifted straight from the waters and glens of that region, which he called the “Land of Heart’s Desire,” and is known to others now as “Yeats country”. Rosses Point Beach, on the peninsula that hooks over the north side of Sligo Harbor in Ireland’s Yeats country “We come to Sligo every year,” a woman visiting from Belfast told me on the street when I arrived. WB Yeats is buried at Drumcliffe Church in County Sligo, where part of his poem ‘Under Ben Bulben’ adorns the headstone Modern life has descended uneasily on Ireland. “Come back and you’ll see!” Ireland seems to me like a riddle with no answer, and the people like a tribe that would have preferred never to have been found.