The last time I saw W. B. Yeats was in June 1938, in his house outside Dublin. He came into the room with his well-remembered, eager step, speaking i… - Mary Colum

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The last time I saw W. B. Yeats was in June 1938, in his house outside Dublin. He came into the room with his well-remembered, eager step, speaking in his well-remembered, eager voice. But he was changed. Old age that had left him so long untouched was making inroads on his physique. The old energy now came only in flashes. One of his eyes was covered with a black patch; it was blind, and he could use only one eye. ‘We are both changed,’ he said, examining me with his one eye. ‘You were once my ideal of a youthful nihilist.’ ... This was what he used to say to me in my student days when I was so delighted to be Yeats’s ideal of anything that I didn’t care what the word meant. Nihilism was the romantic form of revolt in Yeats’s early days; his friend, Oscar Wilde, had made a first play about Vera, the girl-nihilist. ... I think, vaguely, in his mind it represented a youthful fighting spirit that went with reading Russian novels, , and Nietzsche. To attribute to anyone a fighting spirit was Yeats’s most heartfelt compliment.