Analysis of W.B.Yeats' The Stolen Child
The Stolen Child was written by W.B.Yeats in 1886. The Victorian Era of literature was in full swing, while upstart new poets, dissatisfied with the 'airy' nature of earlier poetic works, began demanding more concrete, realistic, and hard-hitting literature that avoided the metaphorical distancing that the Romantics were prone to. They scoffed at Yeats, at his romantic views, at his out-dated style of writing. Frustrated, perhaps even angered, by the scorn of his upcoming peers, Yeats would soon find himself wavering between the more fantastical style of his youth, and the harder-edged stuff that would come to be found in Easter 1916.
This, of course, is of little
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There are suggestions that the seductive creature of faery may very well be a liar, a tempter of humankind; the world of humanity may not be as terrible as its words make it out to be, while the world of faery may not be as wonderful as the child is led to believe.
The first three stanzas extol the wonders of the faery world and of faery life: they '... foot it all night/Weaving olden dances/Mingling hands and mingling glances', leading an idyllic life where the '...moonlight glosses/The dim grey sands with light', surrounded by scenes of breathtaking beauty and natural life. This care-free existence is contrasted to the human world, for '... the [human] world is full of troubles/And is anxious in its sleep.' Note, however, that the speaker is very ambiguous when mentioning these troubles, never confronting them directly, never clearly stating what they are. There is a 'gap' here, a deflection from the supposed horrors of the human world.
In the fourth stanza, an interesting shift takes place. Once the child's allegiance is secured, the speaker reveals some of the magical moments that exist in the human world, moments now eternally lost. '...the lowing/Of the calves on the warm hillside/Or the kettle on the hob/[Singing] peace into his breast', these little miracles of human life are forever barred from the lost child. The faery's honesty comes too late.
In fact, the faery may
In the poem there is also an idea of man verses nature, this relates to the survival of the fittest. John Foulcher shows this through the use of first person point of view. For example in the second stanza “Then above me the sound drops” this again possesses sensory imagery creating a deeper human aura throughout the poem. Foulcher further uses a human aura to build a sense of natural imagery for example in the last stanza : “I pick up these twigs and leave them” adding closure
Throughout various lines in the poem Conder chooses very specific words to use throughout the poem. In the second line of the first quatrain of the poem while describing the sky. The speaker says “The pale grey skies/ A sort of dull and dubious and lustre”(1-2). The words “dubious” and “lustre” give a connotation of doubtful and shine. The speaker is describing the sky as of having a boring and doubtful glow or shine in the grey sky. Continuing in the third and fourth line of the first quatrain the speaker says “Nature lies/ Slumbering and gazing on me in her sleep” (3-4). The word slumbering has a connotation of sleeping. So what the speaker is saying in
The poem contains two stanzas with two different settings. One might not know much about the first stanza; however, in the second one the speaker is next to an ocean, perhaps, at a beach. So, while the first stanza symbolizes the mindset of the speaker, the inner dream, the second stanza symbolizes the outer dream which is what we see; life. The poem
The most chaotic element of the poem not actually found in the quite disordered first stanza, but right at the beginning of the second stanza lies the revelation of the reason for the overwhelming chaos. The speaker had a dream, a desire, to leave this chaotic world. The speaker experiences being told that “it didn’t matter.” The speaker must have perceived all the past images to be chaotic because of his depressing experience. However, even if this is the climax of chaos, it is in a way a turning point toward are more ordered and peaceful world.
There is nothing more precious and heartwarming than the innocence of a child. The majority of parents in society want to shield children from the bad in life which is appreciated. Within human nature exists desires of inappropriate behavior; envy, deceit, selfishness, revenge, violence, assault and murder. The most well-known fairy tales depict virtue and the evil in life. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give a better direction to his life. (Bettelheim).
Loyalty and Freedom, the two most important and diverse themes this novel offers. Jun Do, a non-orphan child living in a camp designated for North Korea orphans ran by his father, the Orphan Master. Jun Do does not get any special treatment because his father runs the camp, however, he does choose which orphan eats first and which one has to go clean the paint vat. Jun Do develops extreme loyalty over the fact that he is living in an orphan camp when he is not an orphan, orphans live in the worst possible conditions in North Korea. He is named after the martyr Pak Jun Do, who showed the ultimate test of loyalty and hanged himself for his country in front of his comrades, In the novel, “The Orphan Master’s Son,” by Adam Johnson, shows a young
In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.
The poem opens with the speaker comparing humans to "clouds that veil the midnight moon" (Line 1). The clouds move radiantly across the sky and cover the light of the moon. The words "speed", "gleam", "quiver" and "streaking" personify the cloud image. Shelley describes the cloud's actions as a metaphor for human actions, "How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, / streaking the darkness radiantly!" (Lines 2-3). He believes that humans go through life with speed, not taking time to rest; like clouds at night, we do not last forever. Shelley’s use of the word of "veil" instead of "covers" creates a sense of purposefully hidden light. In lines three to four of the poem the wondrous sight is eventually extinguished by the darkness, "- yet soon/ Night closes round, and they are lost forever.” By using this image of the night Shelley shows the cycle of change and demonstrates human morality. The speaker is pointing out that humans have short lives on Earth and regardless of how radiantly we may shine, we are like clouds at night that are overshadowed.
The speaker feels that faith has disappeared and has separated her or him from the "ebb and flow" of life. This lost faith is compared to a sea that is very similar to the sea described in the first stanza. Words of lightness and beauty are used once more. The shore "lays like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd." There is a sense of encompassing joy in this phrase. This bright and joyful image is then contrasted by the last five lines of the stanza. "The Sea of Faith" has now retreated, like a tide withdraws from the shore. It is interesting to note the similarities and differences between the words of these five lines and the words from the first stanza. The sweet "night-air"becomes "the night-wind," and the cliffs that were once "glimmering and vast" are still vast, but only dreary edges. The sea that was "round" and "full" has now left the world empty and exposed. Similarly, the speaker has lost his faith and feels alone and vulnerable.
Because the poem is long, it won’t be quoted extensively here, but it is attached at the end of the paper for ease of reference. Instead, the paper will analyze the poetic elements in the work, stanza by stanza. First, because the poem is being read on-line, it’s not possible to say for certain that each stanza is a particular number of lines long. Each of several versions looks different on the screen; that is, there is no pattern to the number of lines in each stanza. However, the stanzas are more like paragraphs in a letter than
When You are Old, by William Butler Yeats, represents and elderly woman reminiscing of her younger days. A past lover whispers to her as she looks through a photo album. Basically, Yeats is showing that as the woman gets older, she is alone, but she does not have to be lonely. She will always have her memories for companionship.
Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," written in 1919 and published in 1921 in his collection of poems Michael Robartes and the Dancer, taps into the concept of the gyre and depicts the approach of a new world order. The gyre is one of Yeats' favorite motifs, the idea that history occurs in cycles, specifically cycles "twenty centuries" in length (Yeats, "The Second Coming" ln. 19). In this poem, Yeats predicts that the Christian era will soon give way apocalyptically to an era ruled by a godlike desert beast with the body of a lion and the head of a man (ln. 14). Critics have argued about the exact meaning of this image, but a close reading of the poem, combined with some simple genetic work, shows
“The Stolen Child”, a poem by W.B. Yeats, can be analyzed on several levels. The poem is about a group of faeries that lure a child away from his home “to the waters and the wild”(chorus). On a more primary level the reader can see connections made between the faery world and freedom as well as a societal return to innocence. On a deeper and second level the reader can infer Yeats’ desire to see a unified Ireland of simpler times. The poem uses vivid imagery to establish both levels and leaves room for open interpretation especially with the contradictory last stanza.
"A Prayer for My Daughter" is a poem written by William Butler Yeats in 1919. This poem is a prayer-like poem. And it generally tells about the poet's ideas about his daughter who is sleeping at the same time while the poem is being told. Throughout the poem Yeats reflects how he wants his daughter's future to be. This essay will analyze the poem in three sections: 1- What does this poem mean?, 2- The poetic devices, imagery, rhyming, figures of speech, used in the poem and mood, diction, language, and the structure of the poem, 3- An essay in a feminist point of view titled "What does the poet want his daughter to become?" .