Poet W.B. Yeats came to recognize something precious and profound at center of his this-worldly identity during family vacations in County Sligo: his Irishness. In 1923, at the age of 58, Yeats accepted the Nobel Prize the only way he could — as an Irishman on behalf of Ireland. What motivated the committee was “[Yeats’s] always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”
