Easter 1916, Wild Swans at Coole and Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats

On May 11, Yeats wrote to Lady Gregory that he had received a letter from his long-time muse Maud Gonne, who had written from France with the belief that the revolutionaries had “raised the Irish cause again to a position of tragic dignity” (White 372). He went on to relate his own attempts to interpret recent events: “I am trying to write a poem on the men executed—‘terrible beauty has been born again.’” (Wade 613). The phrase “terrible beauty,” with its initial “t” and final “ty,” seems to echo Gonne’s “tragic dignity,” though the negatively charged “terrible” strains against “beauty,” making Yeats’s phrase more ambivalent than Gonne’s. Yeats may not have used the word “tragic,” but a sense of tragedy pervades “Easter, 1916.” Recalling life before the

To achieve this goal, I have divided the poem into three parts in order to explain how they all relate to the first stanza and to paint a simple picture for understanding this great work. The first section represents a folktale styled intro, introduces us to the personality of the subject of the poem and her relationship to her environment as seen

When Yeats moved back to London to pursue his interest in Arts, he met famous writers like Maud Gonne. The Poem “To Ireland in the Coming Times” is one of the poems Yeats wrote in 1892 and was published in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends. “Know, that I would accounted

yeats seems forlorn in the ending because the leaving of the swans symbolize another year lost for him. he describes the swans as always coming back but he knows that one day he own't ciontinue to exsist. Their diction remains the same, yet their tones differ in the course of their last

The text proceeds from analyzing each poem individually, and later draws parallels between the two. It tries to answer the questions whether the poems are a call to social irresponsibility, and if the object of the poem, the common man should be scorned or pitied. That the common man who is busy conforming to the norms of the state and the society has lost connection with his natural surroundings evokes sympathy for him. Materialism has subsumed his capacity to think to an extent that he cannot even decide whether he is free to do as he wishes – can he say no to enlisting for war? Or can he hold an opinion that did not coincide with the larger public?

In the first stanza Yeats expresses his conflicting loathing and admiration for modernity through the juxtaposition of “vivid faces” and “grey houses”. This represents the possibilities that modernity can bring; the revitalising of the community or the destruction of tradition and age old energy already lost by the modifications in the city. The repetition of the phrase “A terrible beauty is born” in the first and fourth stanzas articulate this inner turmoil revolving around modernity. This oxymoronic declaration is emphasised throughout the text by Yeats’ confusion towards the rebellion and its necessity. The fourth stanza embodies this conflict, removing the previously represented idea that life in pre-rebellion Ireland was a “casual comedy”, alluding to an Elizabethan play where the characters were content. By asking the rhetoric questions “was it needless death” and “O when may [British rule] suffice?” Yeats parallels the unresolved contradiction of “terrible beauty”. However, this sensitive treatment of conflict allows the retainment of ambiguity and can be related to any change within life, hence allowing audiences to superimpose their own beliefs and ideas into the poem. Yeats continues to explore his aversion towards modernism in The Second Coming with the appointment of a new “gyre” standing as the symbol for a new age. The fear of

Yeats’ interest in rhythm was deeply tied to the notion of the sound of the earth and nature, and our relationship with the elements. He also had a profound interest and belief in faery, and the ways in which one could transcend material reality in order to reach that world which ran alongside the natural world. Yet Yeats, who was born in 1865 and died in 1939, lived through an era of immense scientific discovery and change. He lived in a world where, by and large, to believe in faery was to be irrational, and the industrial hum of engines prevailed over the quieter sounds of nature. In his earlier poetry, he conveys a certain reverence towards the ancient rhythms of language and nature, flying in the face of the frenetically busy London life he experienced as a young man. The bewitching beauty of the landscape of Sligo, steeped in folklore, were the true rhythms which brought on the ‘state of perhaps real trance’, allowing him to

Within many poems in “Experience” images of religion are juxtaposed to those of “dew” which represents materialism. This is used to show the corruptness of the images of the Church and religion as being simple and ever-present. Throughout the “songs of Innocence” there are not many ongoing themes, there is only one on-going theme, that of the Church being ever-present. In “Experience” many other themes are present, such as materialism, giving a more complex image.

Analyzing different mediums can enhance an individual’s overall appreciation and understanding of a particular idea or story. While analysis of a painting can reveal the mood of the artwork, an analysis of a poem can reveal the author’s tone. Much more than that, analysis provides an opportunity to explore each work in an attempt to understand human nature through each author’s perspective. While exploring the painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by Pieter Brueghel and the poem “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams, a universal truth presents itself. The thematic idea of others focusing on the details of their own lives while they fail to notice crises in others’ lives becomes apparent in both mediums. This showcases a level of human nature that both Brueghel and Williams attuned themselves to and explored in their work.

     “The Stolen Child”, a poem by W.B. Yeats, can be analyzed on several levels. The poem is about a group of faeries that lure a child away from his home “to the waters and the wild”(chorus). On a more primary level the reader can see connections made between the faery world and freedom as well as a societal return to innocence. On a deeper and second level the reader can infer Yeats’ desire to see a unified Ireland of simpler times. The poem uses vivid imagery to establish both levels and leaves room for open interpretation especially with the contradictory last stanza.

The twenty-four old romantic poet John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” written in the spring of 1819 was one of his last of six odes. That he ever wrote for he died of tuberculosis a year later. Although, his time as a poet was short he was an essential part of The Romantic period (1789-1832). His groundbreaking poetry created a paradigm shift in the way poetry was composed and comprehended. Indeed, the Romantic period provided a shift from reason to belief in the senses and intuition. “Keats’s poem is able to address some of the most common assumptions and valorizations in the study of Romantic poetry, such as the opposition between “organic culture” and the alienation of modernity”. (O’Rourke, 53) The irony of Keats’s Urn is he likens

The contemporary Roman Catholic middle classes had defeated the cause for which Yeats fought for at that time; hence Yeats felt oppressed by his own people. (Abram 2303)

In the context of John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” “The Wild Swans at Coole” by William Butler Yeats raises compelling dialogue with Keats’ piece, which suggests that Yeats, to some degree, draws inspiration from John Keats, in that his pose concerning the nightingale becomes a basis and “touchstone” for “The Wild Swans at Coole.” Aside from commonalities concerning avians, both poems share elements of Romanticism, melancholy, feelings of weariness, and other key ideas, images, and plots as “Ode to a Nightingale” and thus, “The Wild Swans at Coole” strengthens Keats’ initial ideas in a harmonic and resonant fashion using its own unique methods. As a response to Keatsian Romanticism, Yeats revises the ideas surrounding transcendence of

“You were silly like us; your gift survived it all / The parish of rich women, physical decay / Yourself…” Auden drags Yeats down from his poetic pedestal in a way that is both complimentary and insulting. Yeats’ poems survive, despite himself and his flaws. Then the narrator slips to a reoccurring theme: the limits of poetry. The following lines speak directly to Yeats’ ineffectual activism, “mad Ireland hurt you into poetry / Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still”. This second section disparages Yeats, an Irish nationalist, for believing that he could influence the political climate of his homeland through poetry alone. That magnitude of social action is impossible, the poem emphasizes, “For poetry makes nothing happen”. The last five lines of this section delve into what poetry is capable of, or more so what poetry must do. He paints poetry as a vagrant, traveling “From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs / Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives / A way of happening, a mouth.” Auden’s use of the phrase “it survives” when referring to poetry recalls the first section, and he reaffirms that poetry’s persistence is dependent on its true power, its ability to be shared and exchanged, what he calls “A way of happening, a

William Butler Yeats, the major Irish poet from this era, constructed Irish identity through images of beautiful pastoral landscapes and Celtic myths. He drew upon revivalist sentiments to call citizens to action. John Millington Synge, an influential playwright and anthropologist, based his work on the life and language of Irish peasants to illustrate a raw image of Irish men and women. As Scott W. Klein writes in his essay “National Histories, National Fictions: Joyce's ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ and Scott's ‘The Bride of Lammermoor,’” “The Celtic Revival attempted to produce a new Irish culture in the absence of compelling political cohesion after the death of Parnell” (Klein 1017). The creation of essential “Irishness” was central to the goals of building a strong nation.