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Yeats as a modern poet.

Answer:- William Butler Yeats, one of the modern poets, influences his
contemporaries as well as successors, such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and W. B. Aden. Though
three common themes In Yeats’ poetry are love, Irish Nationalism and mysticism, but
modernism Is the overriding theme In his writings. Yeats started his long literary career as a
romantic poet and gradually evolved into a modernist poet. As a typical modern poet he regrets
for post-war modern world which is now in a disorder and chaotic tuition and laments for the
past.

Yeats as a modern poet is anti-rationalist in his attitude which is expressed through his passion
for occultism or mysticism. He is a prominent poet In modern times for his sense of moral
wholeness of humanity and history. Yeats is regarded as the seed of modernism. He is
intensely aware of man in history and of the soul in eternity. Yeats Is a representative modern
poet and presents the spirit of the age in his poetry. For this, he uses myth, symbolism,
Juxtaposition, colloquial language and literary allusions as a device to express the anxiety of
eternity.

After the World war-I people got totally shattered and they suffered from frustration. Boredom,
anxiety and loneliness. Yeats has used different type of landscape to symbolize the spiritual and
psychological states of modern man. “The Second Coming” is a superb example of Yeats’
modernism as in this poem Yeats portrays the modern chaotic and disordered condition after
World War I and the poet tends to escape from this situation. “Turning and turning In the
widening gyred/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer;’

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;’ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” Then, a
powerful expression of Yeats’ agony facing old age appears at the beginning of “Sailing to
Byzantium”: “That Is no country for old men. The young/ In one another’s arms, birds In the
tress/ Those dying generations – at their song. ” In “Among School Children” he considers
himself a comfortable scarecrow. The heart becomes ‘comprehending, unfortunately attached to
a ‘dying animal’. In “The Tower”, Yeats calls the aged body an ‘absurdity. Elites with which she
will be able to face the upcoming challenges of future. Actually, his prayer is for all people of
future generation. In “Easter 1916”, his sense of humanism is seen which is another modern
trait in literature. The horrible effects of war cast a gloomy shadow on the poetic sensibility of
the modern poets. He feels even for his rival. “He had done most bitter wrong / To some who
are near my heart,” His use of symbols is another modern trait in his poetry which is complex
and rich. He is the chief representative of the Symbolist Movement.

He draws his symbols from Irish folklore and mythology, philosophy, metaphysics, occult,
magic, paintings and drawings. Several allusions are compressed into a single symbol. His
symbols are all pervasive key symbols. ‘The Rose’, ‘Swan’ and ‘Helen’ are his key-symbols.
Symbols give ‘dumb things voices, and bodiless things bodies’. Thus, Yeats is one of those
celebrated modern poets, who flourished in the beginning of the twentieth century and created
their own style of poetry in order to show their dissatisfaction with the world.

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