Adams Curse by William Butler Yeats Essay

Construct a close reading of this poem that demonstrates your awareness of the poet’s body of work.

mind. It suggest the poet see it as love or nothing and that he was

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

This poem is full of beautiful energy of the natural world; from leaves and flowers to sunrises and sunsets, your head is full of golden images from beginning to end. Because he refers to nature as a her, you have an image of mother nature throughout the poem.

The use of symbolism and imagery is beautifully orchestrated in a magnificent dance of emotion that is resonated throughout the poem. The two main ideas that are keen to resurface are that of personal growth and freedom. Furthermore, at first glimpse this can be seen as a simple poem about a women’s struggle with her counterpart. However, this meaning can be interpreted more profoundly than just the causality of a bad relationship.

Not often are men portrayed as a victim within a love affair. William Yeats and John Keats both allow a special woman to consume their emotional state within a short period of time. Heartbreak and anguish are commonly accommodated with love, though William and Keats view upon their loss leads to insight on the nature of love. Both “The Song of Wandering Aengus” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” describe a female figure which has made an impact on the main character, however the poems' use of refined euphemisms and symbolism, although both have similar love experience, they contrast sharply in the aftermath of their love experiences.

The poem begins with the poet noticing the beauty around her, the fall colors as the sun sets “Their leaves and fruits seemed painted, but was true, / Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue;” (5-6). The poet immediately relates the effects of nature’s beauty to her own spiritual beliefs. She wonders that if nature here on Earth is so magnificent, then Heaven must be more wonderful than ever imagined. She then views a stately oak tree and

Although this is a short poem, there are so many different meanings that can come from the piece. With different literary poetic devices such as similes, imagery, and symbolism different people take away different things from the poem. One of my classmates saw it as an extended metaphor after searching for a deeper connection with the author. After some research on the author, we came to learn that the

“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”

    Briefly stated, William Butler Yeats’ The Magi is a poem about people who, upon reaching old age, or perhaps just older age, turn to God and the spiritual world for fulfillment and happiness. We are told in the footnote to this poem that, after writing The Dolls, Yeats looked up into the blue sky and imagined that he could see "stiff figures in procession". Perhaps after imagining these figures, Yeats debated within himself whom these pictures could represent. Yeats then went on to write The Magi, a poem which is full of symbolism, a literary technique that he greatly valued.

Since it does, when reading each line, there is a resilient connection that allows the reader to put together and feel for what the narrator is speaking of. As each line is metrically linked, the words are further recited in a durable voice and the poem is virtually put together, musically. In the first and second lines of the third stanza, an apostrophe, a figure of speech that directly addresses an absent person or entity, is presented, “We smile, but O great Christ, our cries to thee from tortured souls arise.”

Keats, on the other hand, uses the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to express his perspective on art by examining the characters on the urn from either an ideal or realistic perspective. In the beginning, Keats asks questions regarding the “mad pursuit” (9, p.1847) of the people on the Grecian urn. As the Grecian urn exists outside of time, Keats creates a paradox for the human figures on the urn because they do not confront aging but neither experience time; Keats then further discusses the paradox in the preceding stanzas of the poem. In the second and third stanza, Keats examines the picture of the piper playing to his lover “beneath the trees” (15, p.1847) and expresses that their love is “far above” (28, p.1848) all human passion. Even though

This poem is also about Art, and the Irish people's response to it. It is structured around the contrast between the Yeats' dream to write for the Irish people, and the reality.

The fifth stanza describes the quality that Yeats came to see as at the very heart of civilized life: courtesy. By courtesy he understands a means of being in the world that would protect the best of human dignity, art and emotion. And in his prayer for his daughter he wishes that she will learn to survive with grace and dignity in a world turned horrific. He explains that many men have hopelessly loved beautiful women, and they thought that the women loved them as well but they did not.

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