Personal treasures of WB Yeats, which will show the human face of the poet, were presented by his family yesterday to the National Library of Ireland.
The items on temporary loan will be part of the first major exhibition on William Butler Yeats, which will open in May and continue for three years.
The poet's son, Michael Yeats, accompanied by his wife Gráinne and daughter Síle, yesterday visited the National Library, where some of the items were on display.
Mr Yeats (85) said the family was delighted to have the opportunity of lending the various artefacts.
"He [ WB Yeats] was born 140 years ago, and to many people he seems to be a rather remote historical figure, but I think that, as a result of this exhibition with the personal items, it will show he was a human person with a sense of humour and quite different from the poet in an ivory tower that people think he was," Mr Yeats said.
"He'd be delighted to see this recognition. He was always anxious that the public as a whole should accept him, not just the few people who might be interested in poetry."
Among the items the family is donating is a Japanese sword given to WB Yeats by a student in the United States in 1920; an illuminated copy of the Lake Isle of Innisfree; and portraits of Georgie Hyde-Lee, wife of WB Yeats, by Edmund Dulac and John Butler Yeats.
Other personal items will include: a lock of his hair; his last pair of spectacles, with one lens blacked out; school report cards which show that he was bad at maths but was well-behaved and good at languages and chemistry; his passport; and letters between him and his wife, previously unpublished.
There are also drawings in watercolour of the poet as a baby by his father, family photographs, and a cup for winning a school half-mile race.
The material will augment the National Library's permanent collection of Yeats manuscripts and books donated by the family, including manuscripts or early printed versions of most of Yeats's best-known poems.
The material being assembled for the exhibition will also include previously unseen pictures of Yeats and Maud Gonne on loan from Anna MacBride White, grand-daughter of Maud Gonne.
Aongus Ó hAonghusa, director of the National Library, commented: "This will be the first major exhibition developed by the National Library on the great poet and we are indebted to the Yeats family for their support.
"It will draw on a wide range of Yeatsian scholarship and will attempt to engage with all the major aspects of Yeats's life and works to give a comprehensive view of him."