I found that throughout this poem there was much symbolism within it. Identifying that it was written in first person form showed that this poem relates to the author on a personal basis, and that it was probably written to symbolize his life. But when talking about people’s lives, you can conclude that people’s lives are generally and individually very diffe...
The poet writes these poems to express her strong feelings and tells a story of a beautiful garden. She has used many elements in her work to express her emotions and story in a very beautiful and imaginative way. The use of these elements do not bore the reader and emerge them into a story of creation, life and death, rebirth, and the recovering of innocence. These are the reasons why the poem collection is highly successful and why I enjoy reading these poems and highly recommend them to anyone who enjoy reading poems or any sort of
Throughout our lives, symbols and their meaning have had a great influence in our day to day living. Whether it is our country symbolizing itself with a flag or national seal, or our own faith, being symbolized as a cross, or as an angel; in fact religion has many sorts of symbols to tie it to together and for representation. Along with religion having many symbols, the great poet of William Butler Yeats had many symbols in his works and poetry. Throughout his countless poems, Yeats used different symbols to convey his message to his readers. Although from reading several of his works, many of Yeats’ poems revolve around death. In the texts by William Butler Yeats entitled, “When you are Old” “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” “The Wild Swans at Coole” “The Second Coming” and “Sailing to Byzantium” all have their own sort of symbolism that Yeats uses to convey his message to his readers.
“Sailing to Byzantium”, published in 1928, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, published in 1919, and “The Second Coming”, published in 1920, are all some of the most highly regarded works of William Butler Yeats. Although each poem seemingly contains its own personal ideas and focus on particular topics, one common theme is found throughout all three: death. In “Sailing to Byzantium” Yeats discusses the matter of growing old and attempting to find a way to live eternally after death has taken its toll, while in “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” he creates an internal dialogue of an Irish airman as he feels he is about to take his final flight into death, and lastly in “The Second Coming” he creates an allegory for post-war Ireland by alluding to the Apocalypse. Each of these poems is popular not only due to the incredible manner in which they were written, but rather, due to the voice in which Yeats discusses each of the poem’s respective subjects. Through his modernist style, yet traditional form, William Butler Yeats wrote “Sailing to Byzantium”, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, and “The Second Coming” as an attempt to answering the difficult questions that surround death in a way which resonated so strongly onto the audience that continues its legacy to this day.
Similarly in Yeats’s poem, the awareness of death is expressed in the opening lines of the poem ‘I know that I shall meet my fate | Somewhere among the clouds above;’ (1,2). However, as opposed to Shakespeare’s poem, Yeats’s speaker is accepting death at the hands of war. ‘Somewhere among the clouds above’ (2) is a metaphor for death in battle in the sky. This idyllic description is in contrast to what it is referencing, which is a brutal death in war. The speaker’s acceptance of death is expressed in the closing line of the poem. He concludes that a life in which he faces death is more thrilling than a li...
The tone in the first 11 stanzas of the poem seems very resigned; the speaker has accepted that the world is moving on without them. They says things like “I don’t reproach the spring for starting up again” and “I don’t resent the view for its vista of a sun-dazzled bay”. By using words like “resent” and “reproach”, the author indirectly implies that the speaker has a reason to dislike beautiful things. The grief that has affected the speaker so much hasn’t affected life itself and they has come to accept that. The author chooses to use phrases like ‘it doesn’t pain me to see” and “I respect their right” which show how the speaker has completely detached themself from the word around them. While everything outside is starting to come back to life, the speaker is anything but lively. “I expect nothing from the depths near the woods.” They don’t expect anything from the world and want the world to do the same thing in return. This detachment proves that the speaker feels resigned about themself and the world around
This book is a collection of the poetry, drama and essays that have been written by Yeats. The importance of this book is that it does not only make known the major contributions in poetry, drama, prose fiction and autobiography, but also criticisms which have been leveled at Yeats and these works. The criticisms herein are elaborate, taking a volume of 24 interpretative essays which have been written by different seasoned authors and poets such as Douglas Archibald, Lucy McDiarmid, Thomas Parkinson and Daniel Albright, among others.
All in all, Yeat’s poems: “When you are Old”, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”, “The Wild Swans at Coole”, “The Second Coming”, and “Sailing to Byzantium” all show the struggle and opposition between change and stability in the world. Yeats uses imagery, language, and ideas to represent change and changelessness just like the critic, Richard Ellmann, said. Yeats’ philosophy on the conflict of opposites by using gyres shows us how different forces struggle against one another, just like the development of a personality or the rise and fall of a new civilization.
Drenched in a dark pessimism, and nightmarish imagery, Yeat’s intent with “The Second Coming” from a text-based perspective, is a prophetic warning to post-WWI Europe. As the narrator is personal - despite his minimal use of first person - and orates alike a prophet who’s illustrating a desolate vision he’s witnessing in real-time. The first stanza is the portrayal of his vision. A collapsing post-WWI society, sitting on and than exceeding the threshold of crisis, represented by symbolic lines such as: “the blood-dimmed tide is loosed.” Which refers to society exceeding the aforesaid threshold of crisis, and the resulting violence. The poem also highlights mans creeping separation from Christian ideologies, though with ambiguity. As the line
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 ...
As ?All Things can Tempt Me? continues, Yeats addresses this question of role by describing the way he perceived bards in his youth. He speaks of the poet?s song, saying, "Did not the poet sing it with such airs/ That one believed he had a sword upstairs;" (7-8). Thi...
Life is full of change, it is the natural order of things, without change life would be at a standstill, without cause, just an empty world. Change is how new ideas arise, how things become better or worse, without it we wouldn’t be here on this earth. In opposition, there is also a world of changelessness, it is the only thing that remains constant in our lives, there is always change and that gives us the allusion of changelessness. Things are moving so fast that they seem to be standing still as a car flying down the road at sixty-five miles an hour, without the background we wouldn’t be able to tell of the movement. Each of these famous poems by Yeats express this view of the world in their own different stories His first being, “When You Are Old” a poem to a lost lover, in his past that he want to speak to her future person. Next there is the peace searching for him in, “Lake Isle Innis free” where he goes to escape the cities constant change, and his poem written at the same place, “The Swans at Lake Coole” as he watches the seemingly eternity living swans live forever. He finishes with the greatness of, “The Second Coming” where he strictly talks about what the human nature is losing, religion as in “Sailing to Byzantium” whereas the relation of changelessness would be the greatest ending to a life, instead of living that life over again. William Butler Yeats, has a fantastic way of expressing the opposition of the two mediums in life, Change and Changelessness.
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.
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 ...