W. B. Yeats Reads "Responsibilities, and Other Poems" — In His Own Voice
“In dreams begins responsibility.”
About this work
Responsibilities, and Other Poems marks the great turning point of Yeats's career. First gathered by his sister's Cuala Press in 1914 and issued by Macmillan in 1916, the collection opens with the famous epigraph he attributed to "an old play" — In dreams begins responsibility — and announces a poet stepping out of myth into the bitter politics of his own age. It contains "September 1913," with its elegiac refrain "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone," written against the backdrop of the Dublin lockout.
To hear these poems in Yeats's own restored voice is to feel that pivot from inside: the dreamworld he is renouncing and the public anger he is taking on, carried by the same insistent, ritual rhythm he believed was the whole point of poetry.
Who was W. B. Yeats?
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was the towering figure of the Irish Literary Revival and, for many, the greatest poet of the twentieth century in English. Born in Dublin and steeped in Sligo folklore, he moved from the dreamy Celtic Twilight of his youth toward a harder, more public art, while never abandoning his lifelong fascination with magic, esoteric ritual, and the occult. He helped found the Abbey Theatre, served in the Senate of the new Irish Free State, and in 1923 became the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
What makes Yeats unusual among modern poets is that he insisted poetry be heard. He read aloud in a deliberate, chanting cadence — half-song, half-incantation — convinced that verse lost its magic when flattened into ordinary speech. A handful of his radio recordings survive, and they preserve exactly that strange, hypnotic music.
About the voice
This recording restores Yeats's voice from his real surviving archival recordings — the BBC broadcasts and readings he made in the 1930s, in which he recites his own work in that famous deliberate, chanting cadence and even pauses to explain how he wants the rhythm heard. Because no complete reading of Responsibilities exists in his lifetime archive, his documented vocal qualities are used to carry the full text. It is a faithful reconstruction of how Yeats sounded reading his verse — not a claim that the poet is speaking today.
Provenance: Restored from real recordings. We label every voice honestly — restored, narrated, or disputed.
Questions
What did W. B. Yeats sound like?
Strikingly unlike ordinary speech. On his surviving 1930s recordings Yeats reads in a slow, chanting, almost incantatory cadence — he believed poetry should be intoned rather than spoken, and he stresses rhythm heavily, drawing out vowels with an Irish lilt. He even prefaced one broadcast by warning listeners he would emphasize the beat.
Is this really his voice?
It is restored from his real archival recordings, not invented. Yeats left genuine BBC readings of his own poems in the 1930s, and those preserve his distinctive chant. We use that documented voice to carry the full text of Responsibilities; we don't claim the living poet is reading to you now.
Is Responsibilities in the public domain?
Yes. First published in 1914–1916, the collection is firmly in the public domain in the United States and Canada, which is why we can offer this complete reading.
More iconic voices
Hear W. B. Yeats read — free
Get the full first chapter in this restored voice, free — plus one new voice from history every week. No spam.