Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Short essay about william butler yeats
Short essay about william butler yeats
William Butler Yeats
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Short essay about william butler yeats
One of the greatest poets to ever walk the Earth, produced one of the most mind blowing topics to ever come up in mankind, and Mr. McGee is very fond of him too, his name is William Butler Yeats. Why is it that some things stay the same and others change? In the literature book, many stories and poems are by Yeats describing this very fact. That in life, you have things that will forever stay the same and some things that change for better or worse. Have you ever thought about it, what makes us do the things that we do? Is there something that makes us change? Yeats writes 5 poems that specifically talks about this topic; When you are old, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swan at Coole, The Second Coming, and Sailing to Byzantium. To begin with, one of the best short poems Yeats ever wrote is called When You Are Old. We live in a world that you watch people become who they are, and a world where we watch people fade out of society. What the poem talks about is when he was watching people grow old, he saw many disadvantages physically and mentally. But at the same time he saw something he didn’t expect, he saw some things for old people that would never change. The things that change were physically make up. They look older with wrinkles and never getting enough sleep because you are hurting from years of wear and tear. Yeats says that there is going to be some things you will never forget no matter what age. “But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you And loved the sorrows of your changing face” (Pg. 1140, Lines 7-8) Basically what this line means is that love is one of those things that will never change. When you are older, there is one thing you can still do, and that’s dreaming. No matter what age you can still have them ... ... middle of paper ... ...147, Line 1-3) This poem has a lot to do with age. There is no trick to looking young and staying the same age forever. That is one huge thing that changes all the time, every day, every year, you get older. You change in appearances almost every day. But what stays the same, is the things you believe in. That should never really change in a major way. In conclusion, there are five really important poems William Butler Yeats wrote that are contained inside the literature book. They have a very interesting topic that can be discussed forever. That is the difference of staying the same and changing. In my essay I discussed each from each story. These five stories are; When you are old, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swan at Coole, The Second Coming, and Sailing to Byzantium. Each one possess the others don’t, but at the same time have the same things as well.
Overall, dwell on this process of changing throughout the poem, it can be understood that the poet is demonstrating a particular attitude towards life. Everyone declines and dies eventually, but it would be better to embrace an optimistic, opened mind than a pessimistic, giving-up attitude; face the approach of death unflinchingly, calmly.
Keats’ poetry explores many issues and themes, accompanied by language and technique that clearly demonstrates the romantic era. His poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Bright Star’ examine themes such as mortality and idealism of love. Mortality were common themes that were presented in these poems as Keats’ has used his imagination in order to touch each of the five senses. He also explores the idea that the nightingale’s song allows Keats to travel in a world of beauty. Keats draws from mythology and christianity to further develop these ideas. Keats’ wrote ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ as an immortal bird’s song that enabled him to escape reality and live only to admire the beauty of nature around him. ‘Bright Star’ also discusses the immortal as Keats shows a sense of yearning to be like a star in it’s steadfast abilities. The visual representation reveal these ideas as each image reflects Keats’ obsession with nature and how through this mindset he was able
When You are Old, by William Butler Yeats, represents and elderly woman reminiscing of her younger days. A past lover whispers to her as she looks through a photo album. Basically, Yeats is showing that as the woman gets older, she is alone, but she does not have to be lonely. She will always have her memories for companionship.
He feels that growing old is not tied in with a negative context of falling apart physically, but about the positive aspects of growing emotionally and spiritually. From my perspective, this quote signifies that the person you are at the end of life is an accumulation of all the years compressed together, continuing to flourish with the knowledge of life’s experiences. Only with personal experiences come wisdom and
John Keats’s illness caused him to write about his unfulfillment as a writer. In an analysis of Keats’s works, Cody Brotter states that Keats’s poems are “conscious of itself as the poem[s] of a poet.” The poems are written in the context of Keats tragically short and painful life. In his ...
...ory is not a nightmare from which Yeats is trying to awake; it is the very world in which he lives. When he says that if Gonne had understood him he would have ?been content to live,? it is another way of saying that (since she can never understand him) he is not content to live. As a poet, he has undergone a kind of death, rendering him a lifeless observer of the present while becoming an active participant in the past which his poetry explores. Whether he sees this role as a dream or a nightmare, if Yeats ever awoke from history, he would cease to be a true poet and his verse would lose its true meaning.
When you are born people are there to take care of you, love you, and guide you through life. As you grow up and life changes, you must take charge of your own life and not become so dependent on others. Throughout the course of life a person will encounter many changes, whether good or bad. In 'A&P';, 'The Secret Lion';, and 'A Rose for Emily';, the main characters in the stories are Sammy, the boys, and Miss Emily who face changes during their lives. All of these characters are in need of change. Because of their need for change, their lives will become much better. They are filled with wonder and awe about the world around them. No matter what type of person, everyone will encounter changes. It is part of the natural process. A person is encouraged to make these changes for the good. Sammy, the boys, and Miss Emily all encounter changes in their lives that fulfill their need to become something different.
... Therefore, instead of losing mental stability because of old memories, one should try to embrace sanity and perpetuate it in life. Moreover, the poem emulates society because people fantasize about looking a certain way and feeling a certain way; however, they are meddling with their natural beauty and sometimes end up looking worse than before. For instance, old men and women inject their faces to resemble those in their youth, but they worsen their mental and physical state by executing such actions. To conclude, one should embrace her appearance because aging is inevitable.
As an object is transported forward time, being preserved in order to teach its values to the future, it does not arrive unscathed. In Ode on a Grecian Urn , Keats describes the gradual change to the objects as “happy boughs! That cannot shed your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu; and, happy melodist, unwearied, [forever] piping songs [forever] new ;” In this situation, Keats is analyzing the effects that time had on the leaves of the trees, and the season of spring. He additionally states that the passage of time is “[forever] warm and still to be enjoy’d, [forever] panting, and [forever] young ;” In this situation, Keats is describing the passage of time as it connects with the individuals in the poem. While living in the Present Time, people, especially teenagers, enjoying being young and carefree from any thought regarding the future. They would prefer if it could always be like that, but the conditions eventually change, and the people with them. Their environment changes, such as from the simple changing of the seasons. As their time is coming to an end, there are some who want to make sure that their ideals last on, to be passed on to future generations, like Keats is doing with Ode on a Grecian Urn . By preserving these ideals in a form of art, it attaches them with the flow of time, so that more may learn from these ideals and begin to share them, or develop ideals of their own from them. The next example of the passage of time is when Keats recites a “little town by river or sea-shore, or mountain-bolt with peaceful citadel, is emptied of its folk, this pious morn ?” Time, in this situation, serves as a cruel reminder of the mortality of humans. I believe that the deserted town, even in the different landscapes, serves as a representation that no matter where they are, the times begin to change, and sooner or later, the current generation must pass on their world to
Keats presents his feelings on how he no longer wishes for impossible goals, and how it is much more preferable to enjoy life as much as possible. It is of no use longing for things we cannot have, and so we must learn to live with the myriad of things we already have, of these one in particular appeals to Keats: the warmth of human companionship and the passion of love.
"Among School Children" is a poem used by Yeats to determine an upcoming generation with the underlying concept that no possible life can be fulfilled. The philosophy controlling this work suggests that perhaps life 'prepares us for what never happens'. Consistent with Yeatsean philosophy, it follows the dogma which states that wistlessness brings about innocence, whereas knowledge brings us ballyhoo. Within the realms of acquired wisdom, consciousness produces an anarchic state within the individual, causing conflict to be the degradation of the soul and mind. Understanding these forms of consciousness, inscape and instress, as Tenyson has termed them, causes a heightened awareness towards understanding the human spirit and the universe. According to Yeats, this understanding creates confusion and consciousness becomes conflict.Consciousness is limited to the realms of experience.
In order to experience true sorrow one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions. In this poem, the speaker tells of how to embrace life by needing the experience of melancholy to appreciate the true joy and beauty of
...ouraging all the youth to make most of their age. He is suggesting youth to get marry when they are young so, they don’t have to spend alone later. Youth only comes once in a life and that is one of the best times of anyone’s life, so everyone should make their youth special. In Hughes poem, she is encouraging her son not to give up easily with life. She is telling her son, life is not easy and to achieve something he has to work for it. There is no certainty in life, life can be miserable, life is unexpected; but all we need to have is faith and courage to fight back and move forward no matter how hard it is.
Yeats and Eliot are two chief modernist poet of the English Language. Both were Nobel Laureates. Both were critics of Literature and Culture expressing similar disquietude with Western civilization. Both, prompted by the Russian revolution perhaps, or the violence and horror of the First World War, pictured a Europe that was ailing, that was literally falling apart, devoid of the ontological sense of rational purpose that fuelled post-Enlightenment Europe and America(1). All these similar experience makes their poetry more valuable to compare and to contrast since their thoughts were similar yet one called himself Classicist(Eliot) who wrote objectively and the other considered himself "the last Romantic" because of his subjective writing and his interest in mysticism and the spiritual. For better understanding of these two poets it is necessary to mention some facts and backgrounds on them which influenced them to incorporate similar (to some extent) historical motif in their poetry.
He no longer wishes to write about mythological characters that are infinite, therefore he instead wishes to write about something relatable, something that is going to die just as he is. Keats wrote this poem in 1819 and he died at the age of twenty-five in 1821. He did not know how long he had left at the time, but he did know that it would not be much longer and he could not look the spring with joy as he once did. In the article “The Poet’s Season,” the author writes, “Perhaps a different life would have made Keats kinder to the spring and more ready to receive its extravagant benisons. As it was, he managed to leave a poem that stands as the perfect overture to the long, slow-beating, sidereal symphony of autumn in its glory.” Nothing can capture better the mood of Keats of what could have been had been allowed a longer life without such a bleak ending.