Blake vs. Yeats

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BLAKE VS. YEATS

William Butler Yeats was a great poet from the twentieth century. His ideal world was made up of a spiritual journey and a spiritual transformation. Yeats ideal world was based on art and aesthetics of the natural world. He wanted permanence and something that would last forever. However, William Blake, a romantic poet from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had ideas that revolved around God and His impact on his life. Blake wanted a place that established balance, understanding, and wisdom. Blake also wanted an idea of where people were going life instead of believing in predestination. Blake and Yeats both have ideas for what they want their lives and their own world to be like. Some of their ideas seem to be similar, while others clash and are completely different.

In "Sailing to Byzantium", Yeats wrote "And therefore I have sailed the seas and come/ to the holy city of Byzantium." (lines 15 and 16). This line suggests that Yeats was on a spiritual journey to find the place that he belongs, a place that will last forever. Yeats also wrote that he wants stability and to get away from the world. Blake also wanted to find a place and rebuild a new society. In "A New Jerusalem" from "Milton", Blake wrote, "Til we have built Jerusalem,In England's green and pleasant Land" (lines 15 and 16) refer to the rebuilding of a better place. Jerusalem refers to the Holy Land, where Blake feels that he can become closer to Jesus Christ.

In "Sailing to Byzantium", Yeats wrote of the animals as "sensual music" (line 7) which helps the audience feel the peacefulness that he yearns for. Yeats uses his thorough descriptions in this poem to make his audience see where his heart wants to be amidst the chaotic world that he had currently lived in. Yeats was also complaining of growing old in this poem and how the world takes away so much of people's innocence and they are left without traditions, intelligence, and consequences of their actions. William Blake's poem also circulates around the theme of the loss of innocence. Blake becomes aggressive in the third stanza of A New Jerusalem, writing, "Bring me my Bow of burning gold:/ Bring me my Arrows of desire:/ Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire!" (lines 9-12).

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