Analisis poemas de Yeats

A Coat
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But he fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.

Rhyme: abbacdeedf
Meter: varies
Speaker: implied author
Tone: reflective, hostile
Imagery: The mythological references in his poems are like embroidery covering a coat, they make it more beautiful
and rich.
Symbolic Language: coat: poetry, embroidery: mythology, critics: thieves
Figurative Devices: metaphors
Theme: The author would have been better off not writing about myths, then the manner in which the critics
twisted his intensions.
Argument: A writer should be allowed to own his work and what it stands off and not have others twist his
intentions.
Rhetoric: reflection
Summary: In starts with a reflective mood about how worked to make his poetry rich in meaning to have it
misunderstood by those that read it. Begins with a praise of his work and ends with an attack on his actual audience
compared to the imagined audience.

A Coat
‘A Coat’ by William Butler Yeats – Alternative points of view
a) The poem itself is about Yeats creating an illusion of him constructed from misinterpretations and lies, but hiding
behind it like a shield. However, his critics became aware of the lies and used them for their personal gain. Yeats
then relieves himself of the stress of lying and feels free. One may take Yeats’ literal meaning in “coat” as a
protective garment that stretched from “throat to heel”. This suggests that Yeats originally felt vulnerable and
needed some comprehensive protection, covering his entire body. “Mythologies” are entities that are false, but
believed by people as the truth, which brings in parallel with the lies that Yeats covers himself with. When he “let
them have it”, he exercises power and control over “them” by giving them permission (inclusion of the word “let”),
intimating some closure, as he no longer feels the need for protection.

b) The capitalisation “I MADE” may be an emphasis on Yeats’ opinion of himself, celebrating an achievement. This
may be indicative of a narcissistic personality.
c) The Coat described in the poem by Yeats may be a literal coat covering his body.

1a) The poem itself is symbolic of his argument with the media and internal politics. Yeats was known for his political
messages within his poems, but he stopped politicising them. As a result of this, he faced some pressure. His poetry
was used a weapon against opposing political parties and movements, but his party members felt aggrieved that his
poetry was less militant and more romanticised. Whilst Yeats may share some political sentiments with his party
members, he verbally attacks them, calling them “fools” for misusing his poetry. Yeats feels angry that, not only is his
poetry being stolen and misused, but he doesn’t get any credit for it either, “Wore it in the world’s eyes as if they’d
wrought it” Yeats could arguably have narcissistic tendencies, owing to his discomfort with someone else getting the
credit for his work.

1b) This may Yeats deploring materialistic attitudes and arguably, Capitalism. In making something, one contributes
less to the economy and the enhancement of Capitalism. This links with him saying that it’s “more enterprising to
walk naked”. This may be Yeats saying that he would rather work as an individual, instead of contributing to an
economy that he doesn’t believe in. He uses the word “enterprising” ironically, given its association with business.
1c) The Coat may extend to being a coat of arms, such as those in Irish history.

2a) Yeats is historically known for being a symbolic poet and many of his poems use symbolic analogies that deviate
from the literal message. ‘A Coat’ is arguably symbolic of the futility of war. There are clear military references
throughout the poem. “A coat covered in embroideries” resembles a coat of arms, uniquely designed to represent a
group or clan, and often worn on armour in the Dark Ages. Armour would typically cover “from throat to heel” for
practical reasons. Yeats is arguing that the initial heraldry of coats of arms was corrupted through its use in violent
acts (“the fools”). “Enterprise” can be considered ‘honour’ in this sense that Yeats only ever wanted coats of arms to
represent beauty , but the inclusion of violence have stripped its beauty from it and prompted him to rather be
without it and “walk naked”.
2b) Arguably, he capitalises “I MADE” to emphasise the English language. There are two syllable s, which gives the
reader a thudding, primal tone. Perhaps this is Yeats putting his foot down and saying that he is deviating from old
Irish culture and language and erring on the side of England.
2c) The Coat may be symbolic of Yeats’ need for protection from reality and the outside world.

3a) “A Coat” is Yeats remembering medieval history and almost mourning the passing of time and history. Again, the
coat is symbolic of a coat of arms, but a coat of arms closely associated with the separatism of clans in Ireland. Myths
are an indicator of history and time, and the reference to “heel” could be interpreted as Achilles’ Heel from Greek
mythology. This was his weak spot, perhaps intimating that Yeats’ admiration of history was his weak spot and
forced him to deviate from his usual political poetry.
3b) “I MADE” being capitalised may suggest that the reader should shout it, creating a tone for the poem. Perhaps
Yeats’ tone is angry.
3c) The coat may be a history of Yeats’ family and life, much like a family coat of arms, but being symbolic of the
history in that it is made up of mythologies, rather than it being symbolic of Irish clans.
Among School Children By William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats wrote this poem, Among School Children, most probably in 1926 after his visit in that year to a
progressive convent school at Waterfront, St. Otteran’s School. The poem, Among School Children, was inspired by
his senate-sponsored visit to Waterfront Convent as a sixty-year-old Senator of the free Irish State in the capacity of
the Inspector of schools. The poem begins in the first person (‘I’) most naturalistically in the standard pattern of a
guided tour and reaches the philosophic heights. In the words of W.H. Hudson, “Yeats has a knack of raising
occasional poetry to the level of a profound poetry of universal appeal and significance. Among School, Children can
be cited as an example.” This poem is considered to be one of the finest of Yeats’s compositions, which attempt at
synthesizing “the sixty-year-old smiling public man,” the aged one-time lover, and the would-be philosopher into
something as organic as a chestnut tree and as coherent as a dancer’s movements.

Among School Children Analysis

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;

A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and history,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way—the children’s eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

The first stanza describes the poet’s visit to a progressive Convent School at Waterford for children between the
ages of four to seven years. He visited the school in 1926 as a member of a government committee appointed to
investigate the state of Irish education. It was in that capacity that Yeats paid a visit to this school run by the nuns on
the Montessori Method of teaching.

The poet says that it was a long visit in which he went the whole length of school, from one classroom to another
classroom asking all sorts of questions. Going along with him was a kind old nun, in a white hooded dress and
providing answers to his questions. In the school Yeats finds the children (all girls in the age-group of 4 to 7 years)
learning to solve arithmetical problems, to sing, to cut and sew. The students are also made to read books and
histories. They are required to be neat and clean in doing everything. The girls are told to do everything in the “best
modern way”, which refers to the Montessori Method of teaching which has been recently introduced in this
particular school. There is a surprise in the eyes of the girl-students who are gazing with surprise in their eyes at a
sixty-year old smiling public man (officer).

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent

Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy—
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

In the second stanza, the poet’s thoughts go back to Maud Gonne who was once graceful and beautiful like Leda
who later became the mother of Helen for whom a ten-year War, Trojan War was fought, which is the theme
of Homer’s epic Iliad. But Maud Gonne, whom Yeats loved and wanted to marry, has grown old as the poet is a
sixty-year old man now. The poet reveals those youthful days when he and she used to have intimate talks. He
remembered an incident of her student days which she told him once. She had been snubbed by a teacher and the
snubbing had made her miserable: “trivial event that changed some childish day to tragedy.” On learning of this
incident, the poet had deeply sympathized with her. Due to their mutual sympathies, their two natures had mingled
together. It seemed that he and he had become united in a single body or, to change this mode of expression, they
had become united, though retaining their separate identities like the yolk and white of an egg.

And thinking of that fit of grief or rage

I look upon one child or t’other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age—
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler’s heritage—
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.

The above lines of the third stanza bring the poet back from his world of imagination and past memories to the
classroom of the school where he was a visitor. Keeping still in his mind the fit of grief or anger which Maud Gonne
felt at the snubbing by the teacher, the poet now looks upon the faces of children in the classroom one by one. He
does so in order to find out if Maud Gonne might have looked like any of these girls at the same age. For his attempt
at doing so, the poet advances the logic that even the superior ladies like Helen (or Maud) have much in common
with the children of ordinary mortals like the paddlers. Helen was born of the union of Leda and the Swan (the swan
being really Zeus in the guise of a swan bird). The poet is wonder-struck to imagine that one of the little girls
standing before him in the classroom is no other than Maud Gonne as she much had been in her school days.

Her present image floats into the mind—

Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

The stanza four portrays Maud Gonne though, in the earlier stanza, Maud Gonne was imagined by the poet as a little
girl standing before him in the school just as she must have been in her school days.

The very next moment in the fourth stanza the poet thinks of Maud Gonne as she must be now, in her old age. As
the poet visualizes the aged Maud Gonne now, he thinks of her hollow cheeks. Now she appears so thin that he
thinks that she probably lives on the food of winds and shadows. Her appearance in her old age reminds him of the
portrait of an old woman by some fifteenth-century Italian painter who had painted her old-age portrait with hollow
cheeks. Then the poet refers to himself and says that he never possessed the beauty of Leda, but there certainly was
a time when he was young and considered handsome. But now, his good looks and youth are no more. However,
there is no reason why he should not smile at all those who meet him with a smile. He says he may have the looks of
a scarecrow, but he must pretend to be comfortable and cheerful.

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap

Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
In the earlier stanza, the poet has shown how Maud Gonne and he himself looked in the old age. She has been
visualized as an old woman with hollow cheeks looking like a painting of a hollow-cheeked woman painted by a
fifteenth-century Italian painter. He may have been looking like a scarecrow, wearing loose and worn out clothes but
smiling.

But in this stanza, the poet goes back to the child from an old lady. In the beginning, the poet gives a picture of a
little child behaving in its natural childish manner, sleeping, shrieking or struggling to escape. The poet then
proceeds to paint the picture of the same creature as he would be in his old age with sixty or more winters on his
head. There is a terrible contrast between the sweet angelic child and the old scarecrow. If a young mother were to
visualize her little child as he would be at the age sixty or more, she would begin to wonder whether it was
worthwhile for her to have undergone all the pain of giving birth to him or all the uncertainty of that birth. Thus here
the poet dwells upon the curse of old age and ugly transformation that it brings about to the appearance of a human
body. The contrast between the child and old man has been beautifully done. The child is supposed to have
descended from the kingdom of souls after drinking the draught of oblivion. The same child at sixty or more would
look like a scarecrow.

Plato thought nature but a spume that plays

Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

In the above lines of stanza six, the poet emphasizes the destructive ravages of time. The poet has already dealt with
the loss of a woman’s beauty that in old has been imagined with hollow cheeks. He also has dwelt upon a little child
growing in course of time, into an aged man, a transition which would fill any mother’s heart with dismay and
despair.

Here the poet proceeds to speak of some great philosophers of the world. He begins with Plato’s view of nature with
reference to his theory of ghostly forms. Then he talks about Aristotle’s Cosmology. A king of kings is Aristotle’s
Prime Mover or God, the taws or marbles would be the concentric spheres, which constituted the world and to
which the Prime Mover was believed to give impetus or movements. The reference is playful and ironic and also
exact in saying that the taws or celestial spheres were placed against the bottom of the Prime Mover since he has
turned away from all Nature and wholly engaged in eternal thought about Himself. The poet then proceeds to refer
to philosopher Pythagoras who believed in the music of the spheres. Briefly put, Plato located reality in unnatural
ghostly forms; Aristotle located it in Nature, and Pythagoras discovered it in art. But what is the net result in each
case? In his old age, each one of these philosophers became a scarecrow. Thus this stanza emphasizes the
destructive ravages of time.

Both nuns and mothers worship images,

But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother’s reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts—O Presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise—
O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;

The seventh stanza of the poem establishes similarity between nuns and mothers, as both break hearts. Nuns
worship the images of saints, Virgin Mary and Christ. Mothers worship their children. The images in a church are
marble or bronze images which wear an expression of peace and tranquility. The images worshipped by mothers are
those of living human beings subject to all the excitements and agitations of life. But the images made of marble or
bronze also break the hearts of heir worshippers. Sons break the hearts of their mothers by growing aged and weak.
In this case, it is the change from childhood to old age that breaks hearts. But the stone images break hearts or cause
grief and pain to their worshippers because of a lack of change. The stone images have, after all, no life in them, and
the expressions of their faces are fixed and unchanging. Here the poet addresses the images of all kinds of lovers,
pious nuns and affectionate mothers to say that all these images represent divine glory. These presences (or images)
are regarded by the poet as self-created mockers of human sentiment.

Labour is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

In this concluding stanza, the poet says that labor turns meaningful when the opposites are fused into an organity.
The opposites are the changing images such as young girls and young boys and the unchanging images are such as
the stone statues. Both, ‘change’ and ‘lack of change’ mock and torment humanity. ‘Blossoming’ (flowering) and
‘dancing’ can be seen only in terms of the total organism. The chestnut tree is neither the leaf, nor the blossom, nor
the trunk; it is the combination of all these. The essence of the chestnut, the “great-rooted blossomer’, is not to be
found in any single part of it, its essence is to be found in the trees as a whole. Similarly, we cannot separate the
dancing movements of a human body from the dancer. The dancer and her dancing movements are not separable.

Personal Comments

Among School Children is a highly allusive poem which links it to his other Helen, Leda, Swan, and paddler poems. It
echoes “honey of generation” from Porphyry’s essay on ‘The Love of Nymphs.’ It reflects Pythagoras’s golden thighs
from Plutarch’s life of Numa Pompillius. The poem shows Yeats’s scrupulous care for construction. It also shows
Yeats as a scholar familiar with art, history, and philosophy. “Yet there are images which survive the questioning of
life of the time, the nun’s images, the mothers; these can also be the images of art, that “keep a marble or a bronze
repose.” These images can, however, seem to the poet mere images in contrast to real live beauty; he needs to
elevate them further, or they will never satisfy and hence the image of the dancer which is ‘self-born’, out of
mortality, created by the imagination, as is the image of the tree (here standing for the beauty of life itself).” “These
images are created by an isolated poet, and this poem is in part recording of the past, the tragic irony of the poet’s
conception of a state of perfection outside life, of being rather than become, out of nature into the timeless
changelessness of art, this state accentuated by an accentuating tragedy of our being born but to die, our being
paradoxically dying generation.”
Easter 1916 by William Butler Yeats
Easter 1916 is a reflection on the events surrounding the Easter Rising, an armed insurrection which began in Dublin,
Ireland on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. A small number of labor leaders and political revolutionaries occupied
government buildings and factories, proclaiming a new independent Irish Republic. At this time in history, Ireland
was under British rule. After the Rising, the leaders were executed by firing squad. William Butler Yeats wrote about
their deaths in the poem “Sixteen Dead Men.”

Easter 1916 Summary

The poem opens with Yeats remembering the rebels as he passed them on the street. Before the Rising, they were
just ordinary people who worked in shops and offices. He remembers his childhood friend Constance Markievicz,
who is “that woman”; the Irish language teacher Padraic Pearse, who “kept a school” called St. Enda’s; the poet
Thomas MacDonagh “helper and friend” to Pearse; and even Yeats’s own rival in love John MacBride, “a drunken,
vainglorious lout.” After reflecting on the rebels’ constancy of purpose, as if their hearts were “enchanted to a
stone,” the poet wonders whether the rebellion was worth it. The poem ends on a note of ambivalence and futility,
reflecting Yeats’s own reluctance to engage in political debate. The poem is divided into four stanzas, symbolizing
the month of April, the fourth month. It is known for its famous refrain, “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible
beauty is born.”

Easter 1916 Analysis

I have met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

The first stanza describes Dublin, where the revolutionaries lived and worked. Dublin is known for its “eighteenth-
century houses,” rows of connected and identical four story brick homes, each doorway made distinctive by “fan
light” windows. Yeats himself lived in one such house, at 82 Merrion Square.

In this stanza not much happens other than remembering how he and the rebels exchanged pleasantries on the
street or talked at the “club.” The club was a traditional gentleman’s social meeting place open to members only. It
was part of a fashionable English upper-class tradition and the revolutionaries were not members. Yeats admits that
he belittled the earnest rebels to his companions at the club.

Toward the end of the stanza, Yeats introduces the subtle, but powerful, metaphor of “motley.” To wear motley is to
wear different colors combined. The people of Dublin could be said to be a “motley” group in 1916: they were
Catholic and Protestant, Irish in spirit but English in terms of citizenship, poor and rich. The River Liffey divides
Dublin; many of the rebels worked on the poorer north side of the city. Court jesters also traditionally wore motley,
and Yeats is likely also referring to the tradition of the “stage Irishman,” a comic figure in English plays, usually
portrayed as being drunk. The poet thought the rebels were like these ridiculous jesters and once mocked their
dreams. This one word encapsulates the social, political, and cultural situation of Dublin in 1916.

The stanza ends with the refrain that will mark all the stanzas of the poem: “a terrible beauty is born.” Terrible and
beauty are opposite sentiments. The Easter Rising was terrible because of its violence and loss of life, but the beauty
was in the dream of independence, a “wingèd horse” of romantic imagination.

That woman’s days were spent

In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

In the second stanza, Yeats begins to name the rebels by their social roles. Their names will be listed directly in the
fourth and final stanza of the poem. He remembers that Constance Markievicz used to hunt and that she was
sweeter before arguing for Irish independence. He also had given Thomas MacDonagh help with his poetry and
hoped that he would become a great name in literature. After marrying Maud Gonne, John MacBride was accused of
physically abusing her.

The “causal comedy” may refer to the idea of Dublin being a stage, as in the famous line from As You Like
It by William Shakespeare, “all the world’s a stage; and all the men and women merely players.” In the 19 thcentury,
domestic comedies were plays about ordinary middle-class life and family concerns. Yeats and MacBride had been
fighting for the love of the beautiful actress and revolutionary Maud Gonne, whom Yeats adored, but who MacBride
married.

Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.

The third stanza of the poem introduces an extended pastoral metaphor. The rebels have hardened their hearts
against the English, and have focused on “one purpose”—armed rebellion. For years—“through summer and
winter”—they have plotted against the English government in Ireland. However, like a stone, such violence of
thought “troubles,” or disturbs, nature. Typically, nature is shown to be unchanging, timeless, and eternal. Yeats
reverses this traditional imagery to critique the hardened hearts of the rebels, “enchanted to a stone.”

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

In the final stanza of the poem, Yeats asks the significant question about the Rising and the subsequent executions:
“Was it needless death after all?” Was it all worth it? Did the rebels feel so much love for their country that they
were willing to sacrifice their lives? And what good is Ireland if the dreamers are dead? The immediate political issue
that arises is that England was on the verge of granting Ireland status as an independent—or “free”—state, which
would allow it to have its own parliament. The granting of independence had been set aside during World War I
because the English required Irish support of the war.

In the second stanza, Yeats introduced the idea “the song.” In stanza 4 he developed the idea more fully. In Irish
political ballad tradition, naming the names of martyrs was important. Yeats follows the tradition by listing Padraic
Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and John MacBride. He also includes James Connolly at this point, the labor leader.
Green is the traditional color associated with Ireland, the Emerald Isle. It is also the color of the original Irish flag. At
the end of the poem, Yeats reconciles himself to the fact that “wherever green is worn,” people will remember the
sacrifices of the rebels of 1916.

Easter 1916 Form

The stanzas of Easter 1916 intentionally have an irregular line length and meter. Stanzas 1 and 3 are divided into 16
lines, representing both the year 1916 and the 16 men who were executed after the Easter Rising. These stanzas also
are scenic in character, invoking the landscape of Dublin city and the surrounding Irish countryside. Stanzas 2 and 4
are about specific people involved in the Rising. There are 24 lines in Stanzas 2 and 4, symbolizing the fateful day of
the month on which the Rising began : April 24, 1916.

No Second Troy by William Butler Yeats

The twelve-line poem, No Second Troy, is addressed to Maud Gonne, who, to Yeats’s great distress, married John
MacBride in 1903. Yeats was shattered by Maud’s sudden marriage to John MacBride in the February of 1903. Maud
Gonne was the Irish revolutionary whom Yeats loved but who rejected his proposals of marriage. The poem was
written after the final rejection of Yeats’s love offer and sudden marriage to John MacBride, who, ironically was later
made the martyr of Irish Freedom Movement by the efforts of Yeats himself. Although this marriage of Maud and
MacBride resulted in a separation, two years later, it left Yeats in great distress.

No Second Troy Analysis

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?

The above lines quoted in the question are the opening lines in No Second Troy. Published in 1921 in the collection
titled The Green Helmet and Other Poems, W.B. Yeats’s this twelve-line poem is the most celebrated poem having a
combination of personal and political concerns. The poem begins on a personal plane with a rhetoric question saying
that Yeats (‘I’ of the poem) should not blame her (Maud Gonne) for filling his life with misery. From here it goes to
refer to and comment on the political concerns of Maud Gonne, an Irish revolutionary loved by Yeats.

The poem opens with a rhetorical question, the answer to which is implied in the question itself. The poet is
unhappy that Maud Gonne has not responded to his love, but he argues that he should not blame her for filling his
days with misery. He should not also blame her for teaching innocent Irish people the revolutionary methods to get
freedom for the country of Ireland. The poet is scornful of the petty violence of those who would ‘hurl the little
streets upon the great’, i.e., instigate the innocent people of Ireland to perpetrate violence against the British rulers,
which is futile. The poet blames the revolutionary lady for hurting his love cruelly but waves that blame and is
prepared to forget and forgive her. However, he fails to understand her political attitude and the revolutionary
violence that the lady preached to her countrymen (Irish people) for winning the freedom of her country against the
British tyranny.

This first section does not contain a great deal of imagery and instead focuses on fully explaining the initial question.
However the descriptions in the latter part of the poem are far more vivid and draw on metaphors in order to create
powerful imagery.

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

In the above five concluding lines, the beautiful revolutionary lady Maud Gonne is seen in terms of destruction. Her
beauty is said to be like a tightened bow. Her mind is made simple as a fire of nobleness. Simplicity is not a quality
that we associate with fire. Here Yeats seems to suggest how uncompromising intensity and dedicated single-
mindedness are capable of being both noble and, in terms of a practical world, naïve (foolish). The tightened bow
further suggests an inherent tension in heroic beauty that necessarily results in destructiveness.

But heroic beauty cannot avoid its terrible consequence. It must not be blamed because it cannot help itself. It is not
until the last line that images lock securely in their pattern. The organizing thrust is cleverly withheld. The marching
suspense of the single-syllable words in the last but one (eleventh) line, with ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘what’ repeating the
accumulated questions, is a brilliant piece of dramatic manoeuvring. Then the Helen image strikes into the poem (in
the last line). It raises the question which the whole structure of the poem has answered. It puts everything in its
pre-destined order. It is the demonstration, and an important one, of a technique that he brings to its perfection in
“The Second Coming.”

The purpose of civilization is not to provide bonfires for eternal or heroic beauty. Ireland has not failed because it
has not been burnt like Troy. The complete pattern of images as well as the rhetorical control in the poem are clearly
demonstrated only when we read the last line. The poet clearly demonstrates the destructive aspect of beauty not
only in personal terms, but also in national as well as mythological terms.

Personal Comments

Published in 1992 in the collection titled The Green Helment and Other Poems, the twelve-line poem, No Second
Troy, is the most celebrated, and combines personal passion with political passion. The poem happens to be one of
the several poems written by Yeats about his beloved Maud Gonne. This short lyric is half criticism and half tribute to
that Irish Revolutionary lady, who worked devotedly to the cause of Irish freedom struggle with her husband
MacBride.

The poet also loved her and worked with her. The poem opens on a sad note that Maud Gonne rejected the poet’s
love proposal and filled him with misery but then takes a turn to question her revolutionary and violent methods
which she preached to the people of Ireland to free their country from British subjugation. The title of the poem, No
Second Troy, reminds the readers of the “Helen Of Troy” which was destroyed and burnt down at the end of a ten-
year war. It points at the contrast of the Homeric times when there was beautiful city of Troy and the times of “an
age like this” when there is no second Troy to be destroyed and burnt down.
September 1913 BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,

The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread

The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,

And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair
Has maddened every mother’s son’:
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they’re dead and gone,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

Analysis of September 1913

Yeats is portraying merchant class as greedy when he says, "fumble in a greasy till" because a till can be a cash
register. He carries on this and says "add the halfpence to pence" because a halfpence and pence is a form of money.
which shows that they are concerned with even the smallest of change.He then uses a line "dried the marrow from
the bone”. This is symbolism for the Sellers taking away the courage out of Ireland because all they care about is
money.Yeats then says, "romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave". This means that the way
Ireland used to be, died with the old Irish heroes or the people old Ireland used to look up to.
.
In Stanza two he refers to “the names that stilled your childish play” which means that these kids even knew there
names. then it says "they have gone about the world like wind”. Which means that there name are know all over the
world. Yeats then says they" had little time to pray" so they were busy doing what they were doing to do anything
else that was important in there life. Then it says "For whom the hangman's rope is already spun" This could mean
that know matter what this is done and there is no going back. Then it says "and what god help us could they save?'
It states that these people couldn't save anything even if they tried.

In the change between stanza two and stanza three, there is a shift in focus. In stanza one he was talking about
the merchants but in stanza three he refers to the These men like heroes which were heroes in old Ireland. IT states
that For the wild geese spread there grey wings upon every tide. Which could mean that these people are leaving
Ireland at every opportunity. Then it says for all this the blood was shed for Edward Fitzgerald died and the other
heroes. which means while many people were leaving these people where dieing.After it says All the delirium of the
brave? delirium means a more or less temporary disorder of the mental faculties, as in fevers, disturbances of
consciousness, or intoxication, characterized by restlessness, excitement, delusions, hallucinations which could in
turn means that all these heroes don't know what they were fighting for anymore. then it states again Romantic
Ireland dead and gone its with O'Leary in the grave. Stressing the importance by repetition.

The first line of the last stanza says "Yet could we turn the years again, and call those exiles as they were in all
loneliness and pain," it says all is done and only they could wish that they could turn back time and change things
"You'd cry some yellow hair had maddened every mother son" Here he could be referring to his life long love Maud
Gone because when he left to America she got married and he might be taking out his anger of her calling her a
prostitute because Back then yellow was always referred to prostitutes. Then we get to the two last lines they
weighted so lightly gave but let them be there dead and gone there with O'Leary in the grave. this means that this
people that gave there life in the revolution weighted there life so lightly that they gave it away for nothing. that
they gave little regards to there precious life. And that there consequence was to be in the grave with O'Leary.

Analysis of September 1913 by William Butler Yeats

The contextual background is fundamental to the understanding of September 1913, it is Yeats’ personal response to
the Dublin lockout. Workers longed to be part of a Union to protect their own rights, but greedy employers refused
this idea and therefore locked them out of work for many months leaving the workers to live in severe poverty.
Yeats uses cold, hard language in order to condone the greed of the Irish men, mourn the loss of his dead ‘Romantic
Ireland’ and present his dislike of change.

Yeats adopts the form of the ballad in order to mock his forever changing Irish society and emphasize that
his “Romantic Ireland is dead and gone”. A ballad usually connotes stories of love and happiness, whereas in this
poem a reader witnesses cold, gruesome figurative language such as “greasy till” that creates vivid imagery of greed
and dirt and thus adding a harsh tone to the verses. Yeats continues to mock the rich Irish men who are so greedy
that they “add the halfpence to the pence/ And prayer to shivering prayer” suggesting all they live for is wealth and
religion, rather than the well-being of their own country. It is obvious Yeats is disgusted by such a concept as the
penultimate and last line of each verse reads “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,/It’s with O’Leary in the
grave.” His use of refrain highlights his love for the Ireland that no longer exists, therefore bringing to the forefront
his dislike of change. The juxtaposition of the soft adjective “Romantic” followed by the monosyllabic words “dead
and gone” create a fragmented shift in tone, verging on an oxymoron. This links to the refrain we see in one of
Yeats’ later poems ‘Easter 1916’ where “all changed, changed utterly/ a terrible beauty is born”. The same concept
of his dislike of change is reinforced through the repetition of “changed” broken up by caesura and thus causing the
reader to pause and dwell upon this concept. The use of the oxymoron here is strong, a “terrible beauty” being born
creates a sinister atmosphere, whilst his use of binary opposites only adds to his opposed view of change, paralleling
that of Yeats’ “dead and gone” Romantic Ireland.

The futility of violence and war is a common theme running throughout Yeats’ poetry. In verse three he highlights
this through the use of the rhetorical question “All that delirium of the brave?”, stylistically a common technique in
Yeats’ work. Although it triggers the reader to question what has been accomplished, the undertone of Yeats’
opinion is evident, he is not unsure himself. This parallels the question asked in ‘Easter 1916’ that reads “Was it
needless death after all?” as a reader we are again aware of Yeats’ opinion. In both cases the ballad like form is
again used to mock Irish society, the word “delirium” connotes imagery of chaos an incoherence, whist “needless
death” holds a harsh tone and creates darkness; very far from the traditional theme of romance usually present in
the ballad. The same line in ‘September 1913′ also reinforces Yeats’ dislike of change, even the brave have managed
to achieve nothing but chaos. The consequences of violence are therefore futile and any change has been of a
destructive nature.

The conclusive nature of the poem highlights that Yeats’ has given up. The poem is end-stopped and leaves the
reader with the closure of death, just as in ‘An Irish Airman Foresees his Death’ where Robert Gregory is “in balance
with this life, this death.” There is a shift in refrain, it now reads: “But let them be, they’re dead and gone/ They’re
with O’Leary in the grave.” It is now personalised as Yeats is addressing himself, telling himself to let go for this
change is irreversible and evil has triumphed. John O’leary, the man who Yeats’ is referencing in the refrain, was the
founder of Young Republican Brotherhood and taught him that revolution could be born of art. The fact that Yeats’
repeatedly references O’leary’s death, a man who had such a great influence over him, reinforces the idea that he
has truly given up, his hatred for this horrible change is confirmed. He no longer has the strength to fight as all
attempt is futile, it will only result in death, supported by the conclusive nature of the monosyllabic and harsh
noun “grave.” that recreates the notion of death present throughout all the verses.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats

Written in 1888, The Lake Isle of Innisfree is one of William Butler Yeats’ most celebrated poems. The poem consists
of 12 lines, separated into three quatrains, and an abab cdcd efef rhyme scheme.

Summary of Poem

The speaker in The Lake Isle of Innisfree spends most of the poem deep inside a daydream. He speaks of Innisfree in
an idealistic way, describing the almost magical qualities of the different times of day, and the unbroken solitude and
peace he will achieve once he goes. The speaker within this piece relates peace directly to nature and throughout
the poem. It is revealed by the end that the speaker dreams so intently about reaching Innisfree because he lives in
environment that does not contain the natural elements that are critical to his happiness.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree Analysis

The poem begins with this first stanza:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

The speaker begins by telling the reader of his intentions, he will, “arise and go now,” to the isle of Innisfree. In this
first line, the word “go” is repeated twice, the Yeats made this choice to provide special emphasis on the importance
of the speaker’s action. The speaker is determined, he must, and will, go to Innisfree. The second line provides
additional details as to what he is going to do when he gets there. He plans to create a “small” home for himself. The
use of the word “small” in this line gives the impression that he is going to be the only one living in the house,
without any family or relations of any kind. He plans to build the cabin from clay and wattles (sticks and rods). Once
he’s living in his small cabin, he dreams of having “nine” rows of bean plants and a hive for presumably, many
honeybees, as in the next line, the glade (or small clearing in a forest), is filled with their sound.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
 The second quatrain, provides the reader with the reasoning behind his desire to travel to Innisfree: to find some
peace. This stanza also contains the important metaphorical relationship that Yeats sets up between the notion of
peace and nature. He describes peace as “dropping slow,” “from the veils of…morning to…the cricket[s].” Yeats
relates peace to morning dew. In the glade he will be surrounded by it, from the leaves on the trees, to the grass on
the ground, “where the cricket sings.” Continuing on, the poet describes three more times of day and the magical
qualities they possess on the lake isle of Innisfree. The imagery calls up sequences that further emphasize the
importance of the daydream to the speaker, midnight “glimmer[s],” noontime glows purple, and the evening is full
of the beating of “linnet’s wings” (a small brown and gray finch, with a reddish-brown breast).

The third and final quatrain proceeds as follows:

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

It is at this point in the poem that the speaker shakes himself out of his daydream in which he has described the
scenes on the lake isle of Innisfree, and begins to address the real world. Once again he states he is going to leave for
the isle, reinforcing the importance of the other uses of “go” in the first quatrain. This constant repetition of the
action of leaving his home to create a new one, presents the question of, is he actually ever going to go? Has this
dream been something he is now going to realize or does it only exist in his mind? These questions remain pertinent
as the poem concludes.

Yeats continues the stanza by telling the reader that the speaker hears the water lapping at the shore all day and
night. This dream has become a mantra, it is an obsession that has come to haunt him, and it is no more prevalent
than when he “stand[s] on the roadway, or on the pavements grey.” It is now evident that the speaker is wishing to
escape a world that is antithetical to his ideas of peace and happiness. It seems that the speaker lives in a city, or at
least somewhere in which he is surrounded by roads and pavements, both of which are not classical manifestations
of nature.

The poem concludes on a very somber note. The poem’s last line, “I hear it in the deep heart’s core” refers to the
sounds of the waves lapping on the shore. The haunting images of the lake isle of Innisfree are heard not in his head
but in his heart. The reader is left with unanswered questions regarding the reality of the speaker’s plan to, “go now,
and go to Innisfree.” Will the speaker ever make it from his current home to the peace he needs to achieve
happiness? Or will he remain in his city or town, stuck in a fantasy daydream he will never realize?

Form of the Poem

The form of this poem is clear through the straightforward formatting of the quatrains and rhyme schemes, but
when a closer look is taken small schemes and formatting decisions reveal what has made this poem a classic. Two
instances in the last stanza are prime examples. The alliteration that is found on line two of quatrain three, “I hear
lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.” When this poem is read aloud, the repeated use of the letter “l”
creates an auditory motion that is reminiscent of the waves the line is describing. Additionally, in the line that
comes directly after, “While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,” Yeats has chosen not only to rhyme
the ending word of this line, “grey” with the ending word, “day,” but has also allowed a rhyme to exist within the
line itself; “grey,” rhyming with “roadway.”
The Lake Isle of Innisfree BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

Summary
The poet declares that he will arise and go to Innisfree, where he will build a small cabin “of clay and wattles made.”
There, he will have nine bean-rows and a beehive, and live alone in the glade loud with the sound of bees (“the bee-
loud glade”). He says that he will have peace there, for peace drops from “the veils of morning to where the cricket
sings.” Midnight there is a glimmer, and noon is a purple glow, and evening is full of linnet’s wings. He declares again
that he will arise and go, for always, night and day, he hears the lake water lapping “with low sounds by the shore.”
While he stands in the city, “on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,” he hears the sound within himself, “in the
deep heart’s core.”

Form
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is written mostly in hexameter, with six stresses in each line, in a loosely iambic pattern.
The last line of each four-line stanza shortens the line to tetrameter, with only four stresses: “And live alone in
the bee-loud glade.” Each of the three stanzas has the same ABAB rhyme scheme. Formally, this poem is somewhat
unusual for Yeats: he rarely worked with hexameter, and every rhyme in the poem is a full rhyme; there is no sign of
the half-rhymes Yeats often prefers in his later work.

Commentary
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” published in Yeats’s second book of poems, 1893’s The Rose,is one of his first great
poems, and one of his most enduring. The tranquil, hypnotic hexameters recreate the rhythmic pulse of the tide. The
simple imagery of the quiet life the speaker longs to lead, as he enumerates each of its qualities, lulls the reader into
his idyllic fantasy, until the penultimate line jolts the speaker—and the reader—back into the reality of his drab
urban existence: “While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey.” The final line—“I hear it in the deep
heart’s core”—is a crucial statement for Yeats, not only in this poem but also in his career as a whole. The
implication that the truths of the “deep heart’s core” are essential to life is one that would preoccupy Yeats for the
rest of his career as a poet; the struggle to remain true to the deep heart’s core may be thought of as Yeats’s primary
undertaking as a poet.

Themes, Motifs and Symbols

Themes
The Relationship Between Art and Politics
Yeats believed that art and politics were intrinsically linked and used his writing to express his attitudes toward Irish
politics, as well as to educate his readers about Irish cultural history. From an early age, Yeats felt a deep connection
to Ireland and his national identity, and he thought that British rule negatively impacted Irish politics and social life.
His early compilation of folklore sought to teach a literary history that had been suppressed by British rule, and his
early poems were Odes to the beauty and mystery of the Irish countryside. This work frequently integrated
references to myths and mythic figures, including Oisin and Cuchulain. As Yeats became more involved in Irish
politics—through his relationships with the Irish National Theatre, the Irish Literary Society, the Irish Republican
Brotherhood, and Maud Gonne—his poems increasingly resembled political manifestos. Yeats wrote numerous
poems about Ireland’s involvement in World War I (“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” [1919], “A Meditation in
Time of War” [1921]), Irish nationalists and political activists (“On a Political Prisoner” [1921], “In Memory of Eva
Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz” [1933]), and the Easter Rebellion (“Easter 1916” [1916]). Yeats believed that art
could serve a political function: poems could both critique and comment on political events, as well as educate and
inform a population.

The Impact of Fate and the Divine on History

Yeats’s devotion to mysticism led to the development of a unique spiritual and philosophical system that
emphasized the role of fate and historical determinism, or the belief that events have been preordained. Yeats had
rejected Christianity early in his life, but his lifelong study of mythology, Theosophy, spiritualism, philosophy, and the
occult demonstrate his profound interest in the divine and how it interacts with humanity. Over the course of his
life, he created a complex system of spirituality, using the image of interlocking gyres (similar to spiral cones) to map
out the development and reincarnation of the soul. Yeats believed that history was determined by fate and that fate
revealed its plan in moments when the human and divine interact. A Tone of historically determined inevitability
permeates his poems, particularly in descriptions of situations of human and divine interaction. The divine takes on
many forms in Yeats’s poetry, sometimes literally (“Leda and the Swan” [1923]), sometimes abstractly (“The Second
Coming” [1919]). In other poems, the divine is only gestured to (as in the sense of the divine in the Byzantine
mosaics in “Sailing to Byzantium” [1926]). No matter what shape it takes, the divine signals the role of fate in
determining the course of history.

The Transition from Romanticism to Modernism

Yeats started his long literary career as a romantic poet and gradually evolved into a modernist poet. When he began
publishing poetry in the 1880s, his poems had a lyrical, romantic style, and they focused on love, longing and loss,
and Irish myths. His early writing follows the conventions of romantic verse, utilizing familiar rhyme schemes, metric
patterns, and poetic structures. Although it is lighter than his later writings, his early poetry is still sophisticated and
accomplished. Several factors contributed to his poetic evolution: his interest in mysticism and the occult led him to
explore spiritually and philosophically complex subjects. Yeats’s frustrated romantic relationship with Maud Gonne
caused the starry-eyed romantic idealism of his early work to become more knowing and cynical. Additionally, his
concern with Irish subjects evolved as he became more closely connected to nationalist political causes. As a result,
Yeats shifted his focus from myth and folklore to contemporary politics, often linking the two to make potent
statements that reflected political agitation and turbulence in Ireland and abroad. Finally, and most significantly,
Yeats’s connection with the changing face of literary culture in the early twentieth century led him to pick up some
of the styles and conventions of the modernist poets. The modernists experimented with verse forms, aggressively
engaged with contemporary politics, challenged poetic conventions and the literary tradition at large, and rejected
the notion that poetry should simply be lyrical and beautiful. These influences caused his poetry to become darker,
edgier, and more concise. Although he never abandoned the verse forms that provided the sounds and rhythms of
his earlier poetry, there is still a noticeable shift in style and tone over the course of his career.

Motifs
Irish Nationalism and Politics
Throughout his literary career, Yeats incorporated distinctly Irish themes and issues into his work. He used his
writing as a tool to comment on Irish politics and the home rule movement and to educate and inform people about
Irish history and culture. Yeats also used the backdrop of the Irish countryside to retell stories and legends from Irish
folklore. As he became increasingly involved in nationalist politics, his poems took on a patriotic tone. Yeats
addressed Irish politics in a variety of ways: sometimes his statements are explicit political commentary, as in “An
Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” in which he addresses the hypocrisy of the British use of Irish soldiers in World
War I. Such poems as “Easter 1916” and “In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz” address individuals
and events connected to Irish nationalist politics, while “The Second Coming” and “Leda and the Swan” subtly
include the idea of Irish nationalism. In these poems, a sense of cultural crisis and conflict seeps through, even
though the poems are not explicitly about Ireland. By using images of chaos, disorder, and war, Yeats engaged in an
understated commentary on the political situations in Ireland and abroad. Yeats’s active participation in Irish politics
informed his poetry, and he used his work to further comment on the nationalist issues of his day.

Mysticism and the Occult

Yeats had a deep fascination with mysticism and the occult, and his poetry is infused with a sense of the
otherworldly, the spiritual, and the unknown. His interest in the occult began with his study of Theosophy as a young
man and expanded and developed through his participation in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a mystical
secret society. Mysticism figures prominently in Yeats’s discussion of the reincarnation of the soul, as well as in his
philosophical model of the conical gyres used to explain the journey of the soul, the passage of time, and the guiding
hand of fate. Mysticism and the occult occur again and again in Yeats’s poetry, most explicitly in “The Second
Coming” but also in poems such as “Sailing to Byzantium” and “The Magi” (1916). The rejection of Christian
principles in favor of a more supernatural approach to spirituality creates a unique flavor in Yeats’s poetry that
impacts his discussion of history, politics, and love.

Irish Myth and Folklore

Yeats’s participation in the Irish political system had origins in his interest in Irish myth and folklore. Irish myth and
folklore had been suppressed by church doctrine and British control of the school system. Yeats used his poetry as a
tool for re-educating the Irish population about their heritage and as a strategy for developing Irish nationalism. He
retold entire folktales in Epic poems and plays, such as The Wanderings of Oisin (1889) and The Death of
Cuchulain (1939), and used fragments of stories in shorter poems, such as “The Stolen Child” (1886), which retells a
parable of fairies luring a child away from his home, and “Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea” (1925), which recounts part
of an epic where the Irish folk hero Cuchulain battles his long-lost son by at the edge of the sea. Other poems deal
with subjects, images, and themes culled from folklore. In “Who Goes with Fergus?” (1893) Yeats imagines a meeting
with the exiled wandering king of Irish legend, while “The Song of Wandering Aengus” (1899) captures the
experiences of the lovelorn god Aengus as he searches for the beautiful maiden seen in his dreams. Most important,
Yeats infused his poetry with a rich sense of Irish culture. Even poems that do not deal explicitly with subjects from
myth retain powerful tinges of indigenous Irish culture. Yeats often borrowed word selection, verse form, and
patterns of Imagery directly from traditional Irish myth and folklore.

Symbols
The Gyre
The gyre, a circular or conical shape, appears frequently in Yeats’s poems and was developed as part of the
philosophical system outlined in his book A Vision. At first, Yeats used the phases of the moon to articulate his belief
that history was structured in terms of ages, but he later settled upon the gyre as a more useful model. He chose the
image of interlocking gyres—visually represented as two intersecting conical spirals—to symbolize his philosophical
belief that all things could be described in terms of cycles and patterns. The soul (or the civilization, the age, and so
on) would move from the smallest point of the spiral to the largest before moving along to the other gyre. Although
this is a difficult concept to grasp abstractly, the image makes sense when applied to the waxing and waning of a
particular historical age or the evolution of a human life from youth to adulthood to old age. The symbol of the
interlocking gyres reveals Yeats’s belief in fate and historical determinism as well as his spiritual attitudes toward the
development of the soul, since creatures and events must evolve according to the conical shape. With the image of
the gyre, Yeats created a shorthand reference in his poetry that stood for his entire philosophy of history and
spirituality.

The Swan
Swans are a common Symbol in poetry, often used to depict idealized nature. Yeats employs this convention in “The
Wild Swans at Coole” (1919), in which the regal birds represent an unchanging, flawless ideal. In “Leda and the
Swan,” Yeats rewrites the Greek myth of Zeus and Leda to comment on fate and historical inevitability: Zeus
disguises himself as a swan to rape the unsuspecting Leda. In this poem, the bird is fearsome and destructive, and it
possesses a divine power that violates Leda and initiates the dire consequences of war and devastation depicted in
the final lines. Even though Yeats clearly states that the swan is the god Zeus, he also emphasizes the physicality of
the swan: the beating wings, the dark webbed feet, the long neck and beak. Through this description of its physical
characteristics, the swan becomes a violent divine force. By rendering a well-known poetic symbol as violent and
terrifying rather than idealized and beautiful, Yeats manipulates poetic conventions, an act of literary modernism,
and adds to the power of the poem.

The Great Beast

Yeats employs the figure of a great beast—a horrific, violent animal—to embody difficult abstract concepts. The
great beast as a symbol comes from Christian iconography, in which it represents evil and darkness. In “The Second
Coming,” the great beast emerges from the Spiritus Mundi, or soul of the universe, to function as the primary image
of destruction in the poem. Yeats describes the onset of apocalyptic events in which the “blood-dimmed tide is
loosed” and the “ceremony of innocence is drowned” as the world enters a new age and falls apart as a result of the
widening of the historical gyres. The speaker predicts the arrival of the Second Coming, and this prediction summons
a “vast image” of a frightening monster pulled from the collective consciousness of the world. Yeats modifies the
well-known image of the sphinx to embody the poem’s vision of the climactic coming. By rendering the terrifying
prospect of disruption and change into an easily imagined horrifying monster, Yeats makes an abstract fear become
tangible and real. The great beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born, where it will evolve into a second Christ
(or anti-Christ) figure for the dark new age. In this way, Yeats uses distinct, concrete imagery to symbolize complex
ideas about the state of the modern world.

The Stolen Child W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,

The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

Analysis Of The Stolen Child By W.B Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, a dreamer and visionary who was fascinated by folk-lore, ballad and
superstitions about the Irish peasantry. His poetry has Celtic flavor mixed with mysticism and melancholy. His aim in
writing poetry was to make the world conscious about the beauties of Celtic literature. As he grew older, he deviated
from pleasant lyrics to verses with sterner discipline and deeper thought.

Stolen Child by W.B Yeats was included in the volume of poems named Crossways which was published in the year
1889. It was written in 1886 and published in 1889. William Butler Yeats was 21 when he composed this poem. The
poem celebrates the stories of Ireland which his mother loved. It revolves around a group of fairies who lure a child
away from his home to a fairy world.

Summary:

Stanza 1: The poet describes the ‘leafy island’ where the fairies live. The leafy island lies where the rocky high land of
Sleuth Wood touches the water of the lake. Sleepy rats are being awakened by herons with the noise of their wings
flapping. The fairies hid their fairy pots which are full of stolen berries and red cherries. The fairies call the human
child to come to the waters of the lake and wild rock. The fairies asks the child to walk hand in hand with them
towards their fairy island because the world in which the child lives is more full of miseries and sorrows than he can
understand.

Stanza 2: The fairies talk about a place that is far away from the distant Roses, where the stream of moonlight falls
on the grey sands and brighten them, where the fairies walk all night and dance, join hands together and cast
glances at one another till the moon has reached heaven. The fairies tells us that they jump here and there, chase
bubbles at night while the world full of troubles sleeps and is full of anxieties even when they are sleeping. The
fairies call the child to come to the fairy island because the child lives in such a world which is fuller of miseries and
tears than he can comprehend.

Stanza 3: The third stanza of The Stolen Child describes the place where the fairies look for sleepy fish and give them
disturbing dreams by whispering in their ears. They say that place lies where the water flows from hills above Glen-
Car and causes out in pools among tall grass. The fairies bend over the herbs which stand against the dewdrops near
the streams. The fairies call upon the human child to their fairy land because the world in which the human child
lives is fuller of miseries than the child can think of.

Stanza 4: In the final stanza of The Stolen Child, the child is going to the island with the fairies. The child looks
serious. The fairies say that the child will no longer hear the sound of the calves on the hill side or the sound of the
kettle over the fire that gives him warmth. The child will no longer see the brown mice jumping around the boxes
containing oat-meals. He will miss the sights and sounds of the world, because he is now coming to the leafy island
to live with the fairies in order to escape from a world full of miseries and sorrows than the child can comprehend.

Style and Structure:

The poem, The Stolen Child, is composed of four stanzas. Nature and the land of fairies present images of freedom
throughout the first three stanzas. The first three stanzas of the poem The Stolen Child has Celtic references that
makes the reader realize that W.B Yeats wants to return to more innocent and less politicized world of the past.
Celtic legend often offers a myth about fairies stealing a child and replacing it with a changeling. Yeats uses this myth
in his poem, The Stolen Child. He uses this myth to show his desire to return of innocence to the society. The image
of the island is used by the poet to symbolize the separation of the real world and the freedom that it creates for the
fairies. “There lies a leafy island” refers to a place far away from the world of pain which is the real world in which
we dwell in. The ‘wild’ represent the unrestricted life led by the fairies.

On the other hand the poet has used refrain in The Stolen Child. There is refrain at the end of each stanza which
provides a musical tinge to the poem. A refrain is a repeated line or a number of lines in a poem or song, usually at
the end of each verse. There is also a contrast in the refrain in this poem. The human world is full of joys and
sorrows, and tears and laughter.

William Butler Yeats had used vivid imagery in his poem, The Stolen Child to describe the dwelling place of the
fairies. The description of the flora and fauna of the fairy island is very appealing and convincing to its readers. The
herons, the trout, the ferns, the grey sand paint a romantic color into the poem. A world of fantasy and illusion is
introduced to the poem. The use of ‘water’ is symbolic of free flowing life.
The plot of the poem is a metaphor for the return to innocence, which is characterized by childhood. The fantasy
world created by Yeats is a sharp contrast to the real world. The creation of such a world shows the poet’s
dissatisfaction with the real world. Yeats had portrayed his disappointment with the modern society, probably
because of the increased violence in the society. The child finally leaves his world which is full of sorrows and tears.
He forgets his friends, he forgets his family. He is enchanted by the fairies and leaves with them to a world free of
miseries and sorrows.

At the end, Yeats keeps the readers in doubt about whether the fairy world is really better than the world in which
we dwell in.
Under Ben Bulben
Analysis Part I

Swear by what the Sages spoke

Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.
Swear by those horsemen, by those women
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long-visaged company
That air an immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.
Here's the gist of what they mean.

Yeats begins the poem by immediately introducing a mystical element when he says, "That the Witch of Atlas
knew". In the second stanza he continues with the mystical and describes that ghosts are superior to man;
"Complexion and form prove superhuman". Yeats says that the horsemen and women are immortal and have
completed their earthly lives of passion. He sets forth that they are superhuman and passionless so the reader will
not doubt what they "Swear by". Also, in the first line he says the wise Sages swear by what is revealed in the
poem. Section I gives the rest of the poem credibility through the swearing of ghosts and wise sages, and makes the
reader anticipate what is going to be revealed.

Analysis Part II

Many times man lives and dies

Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-diggers' toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong.
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

In section II Yeats conveys the idea of reincarnation, when he says, “Many times man lives and dies”. He suggests
that there are two parts to the human existence, that of “race” and that of “soul”. Race implies a man’s bodily
existence on earth and soul implies man’s core existence on earth and in the afterlife. “A brief parting from those
dear / is the worst a man has to fear” suggests man’s sole does not die and therefore the only aspect of death man
has to fear is the pain caused by parting from loved ones. In the last four lines Yeats suggests that the human mind
is the soul, and when a man dies his soul lives on.
Analysis Part III

You that Mitchel's prayer have heard,

'Send war in our time, O Lord!'
Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind,
He completes his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease,
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace.
Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.

The theme of maturing or coming of age is a reoccurring idea throughout much of Yeats’s poetry. Often times a
person must first experience madness before he can truly come of age. Yeats captures this idea of order through
chaos by using images of war. Yeats was disillusioned by World War I, the fighting that haunted Ireland in the Irish
Revolution and the Irish War for Independence. His reference to war, “send war in our time”, and the imagery of a
soldier “fighting mad” invokes intense feelings of disgust, revulsion, and abhorrence. These powerful emotions send
one into madness. In this state of madness, “something drops from eyes long blind”, which signals Yeats’s transition
from confusion to understanding. He has experienced a loss of innocence as he “stands at ease” with “his heart at
peace.” After Yeats has succumbed to a “sort of violence” he “can accomplish fate” and ultimately has come of
age. Yeats suggests that his “fate” is at a spiritual level. At the end of this stanza, he comes of age as he takes life at
a spiritual level. Throughout the remainder of the poem, Yeats expresses this spiritual sense using art as a gateway
to heaven.

Analysis Part IV

Poet and sculptor, do the work,

Nor let the modish painter shirk
What his great forefathers did.
Bring the soul of man to God,
Make him fill the cradles right.
Measurement began our might:
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,
Forms that gentler phidias wrought.
Michael Angelo left a proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam
Till her bowels are in heat,
Proof that there's a purpose set
Before the secret working mind:
Profane perfection of mankind.
Quattrocento put in paint
On backgrounds for a God or Saint
Gardens where a soul's at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye,
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,
Resemble forms that are or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream.
And when it's vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That heavens had opened.
Gyres run on;
When that greater dream had gone
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude,
Prepared a rest for the people of God,
Palmer's phrase, but after that
Confusion fell upon our thought.

In this section of the poem, Yeats discusses art as a vehicle to bring man to God. He views art as a holy practice
calling it the, “profane perfection of mankind.” It is as close to perfection as the imperfect man can get. He also
gives artists advice to uphold the quality of art of their forefathers, and not to let stray from the great ways of the
past. He wants art to do “what his great forefathers did, bring the soul of man to God.” Yeats is concerned about the
way new artists will influence culture, he does not want them to forget their past and traditions. He is worried that
his death will bring an end to a great age of art.

Analysis Part V

Irish poets, earn your trade,

Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into the clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.

Section V of “Under Ben Bulben” is a call to arms, or pens and paint brushes as it would be. Yeats pleas with his
contemporaries and successors to hold onto the tradition of glorious work which the “indomitable Irishry” have
upheld over the years. This new era of poets and artists, “the sort,” as he refers to them, have butchered and
mutilated Irish art. This mutilation is described in the fourth line of part V where Yeats depicts the art as, “all out of
shape from toe to top.” Furthermore, the modern era of poets and artists have not taken nor appreciated the
unyielding example left for them by the poets of the past “seven heroic centuries.” The word “heroic” here conveys
to the reader that there was a triumph in art made by these men; perhaps a artistic conquest or mastery. The
“unremembering hearts and heads” of the new poets and artists have insulted their country’s heritage. Yeats again
plays the role of the mendicant to make a final bid for “the sort” to “cast your minds on other days.” This is an
implication that they are moving in the wrong direction.
Analysis Part VI

Under bare Ben Bulben's head

In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye

On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

In section VI, Yeats addresses his own mortality and his fast approaching death. He gives specific examples of how
he will be buried, even using his own name, "In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid." He is well aware that he is in the
twilight of his years, and that he does not have much more time in this world. Yeats responds to this by preparing
for his death, even writing his own epitaph, "Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman, pass by!" This epitaph
suggests that Yeats was not worried about life or death, but rather with the legacy he leaves behind for the Irish
people. He can "cast a cold eye / On life, on death" because this world will soon be over, and he will no longer have
earthly concerns in the after life. It is only artistic tradition and heritage that he is preoccupied with, and he uses this
poem to state his hopes and worries for the coming generation of artists.

"Under Ben Bulben" is a self-epitaph, written in anticipation of the poet's own death.It begins (first three parts) by
transferring an ancient sybil (female soothsayer) to Ireland, and goes on to talk of Irish history and the Irish.
We’re set off with mystical images: Sages and the Witch of Atlas, horsemen and fairy women, a company of
immortals that travels through the dawn by the mountain, Ben Bulben. I feel with this presentation, these are all the
same people. The next stanza speaks of the mortality of man. The speaker suggests that no matter how a person
might die, it is not death they fear, but “A brief parting from those dear” and once dead their burial carries them
along to their final eternity. I find this suggestion interesting; it involves no mention of Heaven or Hell, simply
eternity and what waits there, being your loved ones. The third stanza goes on to reference John Mitchel, Irish
nationalist, who called men to arms with his line, “Send war in our time, O Lord!” It almost reads as standing to fight
is a natural position to man,

“Know that when all words are said

And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind
He complete his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease.”

Also saying that all men feel this at some point of time, “Before he can accomplish fate//Know his work or choose his
mate.”
I can see the soothsayer business in the first part, the sybil being part of the company at the start. I don’t personally
know Irish mythology, but the belief that when you’re put into the ground it you pass along into eternity was also
slightly mentioned in “Dead Man’s Dump”, though Rosenburg did not specify eternity, he say that the dead soldiers
had returned to the earth, making me feel that the burial of a body might be a key factor in their mourning and
passing process.

In part 4, the speaker addresses the Irish poet, tracing the history of art from Michaelangelo to the unsatisfactory
present, which he calls upon the present Irish poet to improve.
This continues in part 5, where the speaker gives more specific direction to the Irish poets.
This section is a plee to the artists (including writers I’m sure, but here most named are especially of artistic merit) to
continue creating, to make great works like Michaelanglo’s Sistine Chapel that has lasted the ages can continue to be
creating and give a beautiful meaning to life and representation of a further purpose. The second artist he mentions,
Quattrocento created works of dreamy images that also gave the speaker thoughts of the eternal. Then he calls up
artists and poets, which both include Blake and more than one are followers of Blake, which makes good sense in
this context. Blake was not only a master, but his strong faith and works of faith fit in perfectly. The speaker doesn’t
just want art for art’s sake, he wants it to have meaning, to show people that there is more beyond this existence
and to give a spark to life.

Finally, in part 6, the poem focuses on Yeats himself, his life, his grave and epitaph. In responding, expand on
these notes, quoting to support your commentary. As I say in the schedule, we'll come back to this poem when we
get to W.H. Auden's "In Memory of W.B. Yeats."
It’s rather morbid honestly, I couldn’t imaging writing something about my grave like this. I feel here again, he
wishes to push for a lack of vanity in himself. He wants his grave simple, “No marble, no conventional phrase” At his
grave he wants the words, “Cast a cold eye/On life, on death.//Horseman, pass by!” I feel that he is still pushing for
us to think about more than just living and existing, to actually work to make something of oneself and to give a
meaning to life. Also I feel he suggests we should not fear death, as possibly the speaker no longer does. By this
point, I know Yeats had buried many friends, so I feel he has come to accept it in this.

One of Yeats’ last poems, it confronts his death directly by infamously describing his resting place using his own
name. Though that happens in the final stanza, one can imagine beyond-death as the perspective adopted by Yeats
in the poem as a whole. Aging has always been an issue for Yeats, and here we see an almost anxious rush to get to
that place from which full meaning can be finally articulated. The first stanza therefore opens with an invocation of
Sages, Witches, “immortality,” who gather at Ben Bulben: “Here’s the gist of what they mean.” The frankness with
which Yeats invokes the reading of the symbol (as he had in Lapis Lazuli when looking a the sculpture of the men and
the bird) indicates a “completeness” that has been won in time. In the second stanza, the complete cycle of life is
drawn:

Many times man lives and dies

Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.

The return to national myth is striking after it’s been absent since about 1910. The aesthetic return therefore mirrors
the cycles of mankind itself. But this isn;t so much reincarnation as the production of memory by way “monuments
of unageing intellect”: “They but thrust their buried men . Back in the human mind again. Poetry, which very similar
to the process of burial and memorial, is that which accomplishes “the profane perfection of mankind.” In the fifth
stanza, Yeats excoriates the poetry of the day–“All out of shape from toe to top”–the image connects with Yeats’
earlier “Coat” which reached from toe to throat. Perhaps this worry over form is the reason much of this poem
(barring the beginning and end) is heroic couplets. We see a repositioning, a reversion, to older concept of “heroism
that excises Crazy Jane from the process of development. The final stanze sees Yeats dead. There are no rhymes until
the reading of the gravestone, written by Yeats: which rhymes ABA, a perfect circle, or triad that manges to convey
the sort of resignation to cycles (gyres) that yeats poems have been leading to.
Who goes with Fergus?
Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.

And no more turn aside and brood

Upon love’s bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.

Summary
The poet asks who will follow King Fergus' example and leave the cares of the world to know the wisdom of nature.
He exhorts young men and women alike to leave off brooding over "love's bitter mystery" and to turn instead to the
mysterious order of nature, over which Fergus rules.

Analysis
This short poem is full of mystery and complexity. It was James Joyce's favorite poem, and figures in his famous
novel Ulysses, where Stephen Daedalus sings it to his dying mother.
On one level, the poem represents Yeats' exhortation to the young men and women of his day to give over their
political and emotional struggles in exchange for a struggle with the lasting mysteries of nature. He suggests that
Fergus was both brave and wise to give up his political ambition in exchange for the wisdom of the Druids, as
depicted in the poem "Fergus and the Druid." Of course, from that poem we know that Fergus' sacrifice was
complicated. He did not find a life of frolic and happiness with the Druids. But he did find knowledge, wisdom and
perspective - perhaps, indeed, too much.

On a second level, the poem captures Yeats' frustration at his own failed love affair. He seems desperate to turn
from the contemplation of love's mysteries that have preoccupied him for so many of the poems in The Rose,
convinced that this meditation has only increased his sorrow without providing any means of improving his situation.
The exhortation, on this level, is directed inward, to his own heart. He challenges himself to take Fergus' direction
and leave love behind him.

Moreover, the fact that Yeats draws upon the imagery of Fergus to make his point suggests his inclination to
reference the mythic and legendary heritage of his country rather than the present political struggles that engaged
Ireland. In this light, the question, "Who goes with Fergus?" seems to ask Ireland to join him in contemplating the
mythic past rather than the sticky present. A return to Fergus entails a move away from the reference points of
contemporary politics, toward the mythology of the Irish people.

Finally, the poem suggests the journey toward death. A return to nature, as also seen in the previous poem, "The
Countess Cathleen in Paradise," expresses a movement away from worldly cares and possessions analogous to
death. Yeats summons the courage that one requires to look beyond the mysteries one knows and suffers under -
those of love, of politics - to deeper and weirder mysteries - the wood, the sea, the wandering stars.
In all, the poem has a beauty, especially when spoken aloud, that evades simple readings and analyses. It captures
the political, social, emotional and national ambiguity at the heart of Yeats' collection, as well as his reverence for
the imagination.