Byzantium - Deep Desires that Transcend Time Essay

The timeless essence and the ambivalence in Yeats’ poems urge the reader’s response to relevant themes in society today. This enduring power of Yeats’ poetry, influenced by the Mystic and pagan influences is embedded within the textual integrity drawn from poetic techniques and structure when discussing relevant contextual concerns.

The next significant mention on this subject is in line two of the second stanza were the sentence: “A pulse in the eternal mind ”. This shows that mortality is indeed an important issue, this however has greater connotations as it shows that he feels he has left an impression on the world which he later puts down to being English.

The Byzantium Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in Rome. He made Byzantium his new capital, instead of leaving the name as Byzantium he changed it to Constantinople. Constantine was a very powerful Roman Emperor. He achieved many things, and was remembered forever. He was a brutal emperor, executing two of his family members, and converting the whole Roman Empire to Christianity. He reigned for 31 years. Constantine was born on February 27, in either 272 or 285 AD. He was born in Naissus, Moesia which is now Nis, Serbia. He was known as Flavius Valerious Constantinus or Constantine the Great. He was the son of Constantius I and Helena.

He later starts hearing things around the house, and is thinking that his beloved Lenore will come back from the dead. He later starts seeing this bird a raven, and every time he sees it the bird says “Nevermore”. Throughout this poem he is grieving and this bird keeps telling him “Nevermore” which he does not understand why he keeps saying that. He tries to talk to the bird to get answers but the bird keeps repeating itself. In the end, the man could no longer take it and he ended up killing himself. A lot of times when people loose someone we tend to say we see them or they are still here with us, and that can later lead to our deaths. My Grandpa from my mother side had passed away, and we never went to his funeral. My auntie had told us that since that day of the funeral she could feel my grandpa around. She thought she was going crazy till she moved out and started fresh. This tells us that if we keep grieving in the past, and stay there most likely we will end up to our deaths since we do not let the past

The poem is a reality poem about real life. It infers about memories, nature, and the cycle of life and death. Things can only stay beautiful for so long, but the circle of life will continue. The ending seems like the world is over, but in reality it will keep on going.

The Poem begins with a personification of death as "kindly" (3). By doing this, the speaker introduces a portrayal on death that might have conflictions. Most of the times, death has a negative connotation. Whether it is an inevitable or tragic view, it opposes to what is seen in the poem. The speaker accepts death as a friendly invitation when the time is right, rather than something that is bound to happen. The speaker then joins immortality, personified as a passenger in a carriage. Immortality simply cannot be a passenger as it is a non-living thing. The reasoning for this could be that immortality ties together the link between the speaker and death, ultimately introducing the voyage to come. The first stanza sets a precedent of a meter to follow throughout most of the poem. The first line contains eight

This is where I got frustrated with trying to understand the poem. I personally think of nature I think of peace and tranquility and I originally thought that the poem had a peaceful vibe to it. However, I started to analyze the poem while looking at the “Glossary of Traditional Symbols in Western Literature”. This glossary helped me break down some of the ideas to get a better understanding. The first word I decided to look at was the world blackbird, when you break the word down, the word black basically means sad and really bad things and the word bird means freedom, the complete opposite of sorrow and death. After I had looked at each part of the poem and then looked at it as a whole I notice two different tones to the poems story. The poem start off talking of aging, death, and obstacles, then it transitions to accomplishments, calmness, harmony, and purity. To conclude, I believe that every poem can have more then one type of tone and it is important to keep an open mind while reading

As I researched life and death in his works, I assumed that he was fascinated with it. This belief is reflected in The Span of Life, a two-line poem that contains a whole lot of symbolism. It is the story of a dog that is too old to get up. The narrator is reminiscing of when the dog was a pup. This poem reminded me of an old man looking back on his life, wondering where all the years went. I translated these two short lines into a person's submission to life and death, accepting the fact that one must die sometime.

Yeats was a confessional poet - that is to say, that he wrote his poetry directly from his own experiences. He was an idealist, with a purpose. This was to create Art for his own people - the Irish. But in so doing, he experienced considerable frustration and disillusionment. The tension between this ideal, and the reality is the basis of much of his writing. One central theme of his earlier poetry is the contrast

I think that the poet is trying to tell us to live life to the fullest

The mood of the poem is sad and the tone is dark. The bird, love, is in danger from others. The sparrow seems vulnerable and lost. It cannot help itself. The end of the poem describes love as hungry, as faceless and the sparrow singing, famished in the speaker's hand. These are gloomy images. The author of the poem’s husband died. Her poem shows yearning and longing.

In the second stanza, the speaker beholds a piper joyfully playing under the tress for his lover to find him with song. “Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared. The use of imagery of the senses is effective here. For I consider poetry to be more musical in nature than literary text. The speaker claims to be hearing melodies emanating from the urn, which for me the sound transmission from the urn correlates to the finite aspects of fleeting love. While the nature of art of the urn seems to me to represent the exquisiteness and infinity of the universe. Indeed, the sounds of silence from art is akin to vastness of space and time. “She cannot fade, though, thou hast not thy bliss,” (line19). Keats is asking the readers to not grieve for him. Because, her beauty will not diminish over time it is everlasting.

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

“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret.” (Keats) In “Ode to A Nightingale,” John Keats is the narrator who is in a state of drowsiness and numbness when he sees a nightingale and then goes on to explain his encounter with the bird. Although the surface level meaning of the poem is a man expressing his thought to and about a bird, there is a deeper meaning that can be seen when you investigate the literary devices used. Keats uses imagery, tone, and symbolism to display the theme of pain and inner conflict between life and death.

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.