William Butler Yeats was born on the 13th of June in 1865, in Sandymount, Country Dublin, Ireland. His family was extremely artistic. His father, John Butler Yeats, studied art at Heatherley’s Art School in London, his brother Jack became a well-renowned painter, and his sisters Elizabeth and Susan became involved in the Arts and Crafts movement, which was the use of handmade objects and boycotting mechanical objects. Yeats grew up as a member of the former Protestant Ascendancy, where the changes in Ireland directly disadvantaged him because of his heritage. During his childhood, he experienced political power shifting away from the Protestant Ascendancy, which had a major influence on his poems later on in his life. At the age of two, his family moved to England for his father to study art and become an artist. At first, he and his siblings were taught at home, where his mother entertained them with stories and folktales from Ireland. His father gave an education of only geography and chemistry and took William to natural history explorations. On 26 January 1877, William Yeats entered the Godolphin primary school in Hammersmith where he would learn for four years, before his family moved back to Dublin. In 1881, Yeats continued his education at Erasmus Smith High School in Dublin, near his father’s studio. Yeats spent most of his time there, meeting the city’s artists and writers. It was during this time when he started to write poetry. During the years of 1884 and 1886, Yeats attended the Metropolitan School of Art, when in 1885 his poetry works and essay of “The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson” were published in the Dublin University Review. Others of his works from this time include a play about a bishop, a monk and a woman ... ... middle of paper ... ...ows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? The poem begins with a description of multiple disastrous situations: the falcon, a metaphor for a person, cannot hear the falconer, God, which means that people cannot hear what God is saying, and that chaos and anarchy will uphold the government. The Second Coming is when Jesus or any other religious figure comes back to the world, and something major happens that changes the current way of life. In this case, a vision of a sphinx comes out of Spiritus Mundi (Spirit of the World) and goes towards Bethlehem, possibly saying that the Anti-Christ will return and spread the disastrous happenings throughout the world.
Born in March of 1916 as Jacob (Jack) Ezra Katz, he was the third child to Benjamin and Augusta Katz. His parents were both Polish immigrants of Jewish descent and they raised him in East New York, the predominantly Jewish section of Brooklyn. As immigrants they were plagued with financial difficulties and this was further aggravated when they struggled through the Depression. Despite all of these hardships, Keats had already begun to showcase his artistic abilities. At the age of eight he was hired to paint the sign of a local store. Naturally, his father was quite proud of him when he earned twenty-five cents for his work and hoped that this might endeavor might lead to a steady career as a sign pa¬inter. Unfortunately for him, Keats was smitten with Fine Arts and won his first award in Junior High School: a medal for ...
Everett, Glenn. "John Keats---A Brief Biography." The Victorian Web. N.p., July 2000. Web. 21 Dec. 2013. .
His first poems about romance mentioned grey hair and exhaustion even if he wrote them while still young, and they still portray his consciousness about old age (Hoffman 29). In his 60s, Yeats began to get sickly. Regardless of his deteriorated health, he spent the last fifteen years of his life as a lively man who had an extraordinary appetite for life. He still wrote plays about spiritualism. One time after a recovery from a severe sickness, he created a sequence of dynamic poetries that recounted about an old poor fictitious female called Silly Jane as an expression of happiness. The passion for poetry kept Yeats active in his career and was determined to ensure that sickness did not hinder his
In these lines from "All Things can Tempt Me" (40, 1-5), Yeats defines the limitations of the poet concerning his role in present time. These "temptations" (his love for the woman, Maude Gonne, and his desire to advance the Irish Cultural Nationalist movement) provide Yeats with the foundation upon which he identifies his own limitations. In his love poetry, he not only expresses his love for Gonne, he uses his verse to influence her feelings, attempting to gain her love and understanding. In regard to the Nationalists, he incorporates traditional Irish characters, such as Fergus and the Druids, to create an Irish mythology and thereby foster a national Irish identity. After the division of the Cultural Nationalists, Yeats feels left behind by the movement and disillusioned with their violent, "foolish" methods. He is also repeatedly rejected by Gonne. These efforts to instigate change through poetry both fail, bringing the function of the poet and his poetry into question. If these unfruitful poems tempt him from his ?craft of verse,? then what is the true nature verse and why is it a ?toil? for the poet? Also, if Yeats cannot use poetry to influence the world around him, then what is his role as a poet?
It has been acknowledged by many scholars that Yeats' study of Blake greatly influenced his poetic expression. This gives rise to the widely held assertion that Yeats is indebted to Blake. While I concur with this assertion, I feel that the perhaps greater debt is Blake's.
Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland, on June 13, 1865. His father was a lawyer-turned-Irish painter. In 1867 the family followed him to London and settled in Bedford Park. In 1881 they returned to Dublin, where Yeats studied the Metropolitan School of Art. Yeats spent much time with his grandparents in County Sligo in northwestern Ireland. The scenery and folklore of this region greatly influenced Yeats' work. For a while he studied art, but during the 1890s he became active in London's literary life and helped found the Rhymers' Club.
Though written only two years after the first version of "The Shadowy Waters", W.B. Yeats' poem "Adam's Curse" can be seen as an example of a dramatic transformation of Yeats' poetic works: a movement away from the rich mythology of Ireland's Celtic past and towards a more accessible poesy focused on the external world. Despite this turn in focus towards the world around him, Yeats retains his interest in symbolism, and one aspect of his change in style is internalization of the symbolic scheme that underlies his poetry. Whereas more mythological works like "The Shadowy Waters" betray a spiritual syncretism not unlike that of the Golden Dawn, "Adam's Curse" and its more realistic fellows offer a view of the world in which symbolic systems are submerged, creating an undercurrent of meaning which lends depth to the outward circumstances, but which is itself not immediately accessible to the lay or academic reader. In a metaphorical sense, then, Yeats seems in these later poems to achieve a doubling of audience, an equivocation which addresses the initiate and the lay reader simultaneously.
Analysis of William Butler Yeats' Poems; When You Are Old, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swans at Coole, The Second Coming and Sailing to Byzantium
William Butler Yeats is an Irish poet from the nineteenth century. William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1865. He was educated in both Dublin and London, and he wrote his first verse in 1877 (nobelprize.org). He wrote many poems during his lifetime, and is thought to be the most influential poet of his era. He was very influential in the Modernism era. William Butler Yeats was one of the most famous poets from the nineteenth century. Even though William Butler Yeats wrote both Victorian and Modernistic literature, he still had a large impact on the modernistic style. “After 1910, Yeats's dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical, static, and esoteric style” (nobelprize.org). Even though Yeats was considered a patriot, “he deplored the hatred and bigotry of the Nationalist movement” This concern was new in the Modernism era. William was awarded the Nobel Prize for his artistic writing. “His significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English”.(nobelprize.org) An Irish Foresees his Airmen is a short poem that was written to commemorate Robert Gregory, the son of Yeats Patron, Lady (Poetry for students). This poem was first published in the collection of The Wild Swans at Coole. Yeats wrote two other poems about Robert Gregory, which are also included in The Wild Swans at Coole. The poem an Irish Airmen Foresees his Death is a poem written in the modernistic style, and displays it ...
John Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795. He was educated at Clarke’s School in Enfield. He enjoyed a liberal education that mainly reflected on his poetry. His father died when he was eight and his mother died when he was fourteen. After his mother died, his maternal grandmother granted two London merchants, John Rowland Sandell and Richard Abbey, guardianship. Abbey played a major roll in the development of Keats, as Sandell only played a minor one. These circumstances drew him extremely close to his two brothers, George and Tom, and his sister Fanny. When he 15, Abbey removed him from the Clarke School, as he became an apothecary-surgeon’s apprentice. Then in 1815, he became a student at Guy’s Hospital. He registered for a six- month course to become a licensed surgeon. Soon after he decided he was going to be a doctor he realized his true passion was in poetry. So he decided he would try to excel in poetry also. His poetry that he wrote six years before his death was not very good. As his life progressed his poetry became more mature and amazing. He looked up to Shakespeare and Milton. He studied a lot of there poetry and imitated these two writers. His work resembled Shakespeare.
The poem September 1913 focuses on the time where the Irish Independence was at its highest. Yeats repeats the phrase “romantic Ireland” a lot in this poem as it refers to the sacrifice of the materialistic things for independence and freedom. To further emphasize the importance and greatness of the revolution, Yeats pointed out the names of heroic individuals who gave their lives to fight for the cause. Yeats did not give any detail about the Irish heroes but he does state that “they have gone about the world like wind” (11). The heroes were so famous; their names could be heard and talked about all over the world. In this poem, Yeats does not go directly in to detail about the historical events that happened but fo...
Author of poetry, William Butler Yeats, wrote during the twentieth century which was a time of change. It was marked by world wars, revolutions, technological innovations, and also a mass media explosion. Throughout Yeats poems he indirectly sends a message to his readers through the symbolism of certain objects. In the poems The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The wild Swans at Cole, and Sailing to Byzantium, all by William Yeats expresses his emotional impact of his word choices and symbolic images.
W. B. Yeats is one of the foremost poets in English literature even today. He was considered to be one of the most important symbolists of the 20th century. He was totally influenced by the French movement of the 19th century. He was a dreamer and visionary, who was fascinated by folk-lore, ballad and superstitions of the Irish peasantry. Yeats poems are fully conversant with the Irish background, the Irish mythologies etc. Yeats has tried to bring back the “simplicity” and “altogetherness” of the earlier ages and blend it with the modern ideas of good and evil. Almost all his poems deal with ancient Ireland ...
Yeats' poetry is very dramatic because he usually creates dramatic contrasts within his poems and because his tone changes regularly. When he wasn't in conflict with the world around him he was in conflict with himself. He was never satisfied with modern Ireland, even when he was younger. As he grew older, his dissatisfaction became even greater.
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, a dramatist, and a prose writer - one of the greatest English-language poets of the twentieth century. (Yeats 1) His early poetry and drama acquired ideas from Irish fable and arcane study. (Eiermann 1) Yeats used the themes of nationalism, freedom from oppression, social division, and unity when writing about his country. Yeats, an Irish nationalist, used the three poems, “To Ireland in the Coming Times,” “September 1913” and “Easter 1916” which revealed an expression of his feelings about the War of Irish Independence through theme, mood and figurative language.