Stamp issue marks Yeats birth

12 June 2015

The stamp was unveiled in Sligo, a place of inspiration for the poet, by Daniel Mulhall, Irish Ambassador to the UK and a leading Yeats scholar.

Designed by Irish design company Detail, the stamp is based on an iconic image of the poet from London’s National Portrait Gallery by photographer George C Beresford. Accompanying the stamp issue is a beautiful First Day Cover (FDC) containing well-loved and remembered lines from the poem ‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’.

‘I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’

The stamp and FDC may be viewed and purchased online at irishstamps.ie; at main post offices and at the GPO, Dublin.

Yeats was born in Dublin in June, 1865 he was a poet, playwright, public figure, key champion of the Irish Literary revival, one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre and winner of the Nobel prize for Literature in 1923.

An Post’s latest commemorative stamp is one of the milestone events of Yeats2015 a year-long celebration of the poet, his work and his influence on world literature and Irish ideas of nationhood and culture.