9. ST - City Hall

Currently the city hall, this site served as the New Fort for Oliver Cromwell's troops in the mid 17th century. The current building is in the Italian Renaissance style and dates from 1865.For those listening to this audio on the Yeats Country Guide playlist on Spotify, the next song heard is The Waterboys singing a later Yeats poem, 'Politics'. We've kept mainly to 19th century Yeats poems in our guide, but this later poem seemed to fit well, bearing in mind the history of this building. The poem was written on 24th May 1938 during the Spanish Civil War and the backdrop of the pre-World War II period. It alludes to political situations in other countries worldwide, like Spain and Russia. ‘Politics’ is considered the last lyric poem that Yeats wrote in his lifetime as well as being the last poem printed in all posthumous collections of his work.