In the context of John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” “The Wild Swans at Coole” by William Butler Yeats raises compelling dialogue with Keats’ piece, which suggests that Yeats, to some degree, draws inspiration from John Keats, in that his pose concerning the nightingale becomes a basis and “touchstone” for “The Wild Swans at Coole.” Aside from commonalities concerning avians, both poems share elements of Romanticism, melancholy, feelings of weariness, and other key ideas, images, and plots as “Ode to a Nightingale” and thus, “The Wild Swans at Coole” strengthens Keats’ initial ideas in a harmonic and resonant fashion using its own unique methods. As a response to Keatsian Romanticism, Yeats revises the ideas surrounding transcendence of …show more content…
Keats artfully notes that the only sound in the night comes from the nightingale’s singing; alternatively, the sole nightingale is the only sound that poet-speaker can hear in his reflection, implying that the bird is as solitary as the poet-speaker, as most birds sing during the day. Yeats, however, comments on his loneliness indirectly with the mention of “nine-and-fifty swans” that he has been counting for nineteen meticulous autumns. Swans, famous for finding mates for life, characteristically live in pairs and are known to create a heart shape with their necks-- Yeats recognizes this explicitly later in the poem by observing that they travelled “lover by lover.” Thus, the inclusion of the odd numbers is not coincidental and raises a question of why Yeats chose to use “59” and “19” in particular. Perhaps the speaker of the poem has lost his spouse and feels lonely, or perhaps he has yet to find a spouse and will soon die-- in either case, the solitude is strongly apparent by the lines, “I have looked upon those brilliant creatures (“lover by lover”) / And now my heart is sore.” Additionally, 59 swans in one area is an uncommon sight and catches the guaranteed attention of any passerby and suggests an element of meticulousness from the speaker. By including the absurd number of swans in his sight, it is as though
The similarities between the poems lie in their abilities to utilize imagery as a means to enhance the concept of the fleeting nature that life ultimately has and to also help further elaborate the speaker’s opinion towards their own situation. In Keats’ poem, dark and imaginative images are used to help match with the speaker’s belief that both love and death arise from fate itself. Here, Keats describes the beauty and mystery of love with images of “shadows” and “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” to illustrate his belief that love comes from fate, and that he is sad to miss out on such an opportunity when it comes time for his own death.
William Butler Yeats is one of the most esteemed poets in 20th century literature and is well known for his Irish poetry. While Yeats was born in Ireland, he spent most of his adolescent years in London with his family. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he later moved back to Ireland. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and joined the Theosophical Society soon after moving back. He was surrounded by Irish influences most of his life, but it was his commitment to those influences and his heritage that truly affected his poetry. William Butler Yeats’s poetry exemplifies how an author’s Irish identity can help create and influence his work.
William Butler Yeats' poem "The Wild Swans at Coole" tells of a man who, in the autumn, would visit this pool of water that was a resting place for a flock of swans. He visits them one autumn but does not return for 19 years, "The nineteenth autumn has come upon me since I first made my count." Yeats uses simple diction so he does not distract from the empasis on the swans themselves. Words like; "Clamorous" (line 12) and
Keats was a key figure in the Romantic era in the first part of the 17th century which, according to René Wellek 's classic definition, sought to substitute 'imagination for the view of poetry, nature for the view of the world, and symbol and myth for poetic style. ' Therefore, Keats ' 'Ode to a Nightingale ', written in 1819, has an affiliation with the natural world, through both the metaphors he uses and his meter and rhyme. The fact that the poem is an Ode to a nightingale shows that Keats is addressing the bird in particular and therefore it asserts the link that is found in Romanticism between humans and the natural world. M. H. Abrams states that Keats wrote this poem, whilst reminiscent of a Horation Ode, as what came to be known as a Romantic Meditative Ode which is 'the personal ode of description and passionate meditation '. It is clear here that what Keats is passionate about in this poem is 'the country-green '. Keats coined the term negative capability to describe 'passionate mediation ' in a letter to
Keats seems to find true beauty in everything; every view or perspective he has. In Ode to a Nightingale, the beauty is thinking that maybe death gives some one a chance not to have any worries, but knowing that there is always light at the end of a tunnel, and showing that there is always some one’s own Nightingale to put life into perspective when change is needed. Yes, the Nightingale in the poem might represent darkness in a way in which Keats thinks of death throughout many scenarios, but Keats still imagines this Nightingale as a beautiful creature in a beautiful world, “To cease upon the midnight with no pain, while thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad in such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain- to thy high requiem become a sod” (Lines 56-60). Keats is not envious of the Nightingale, but just wants to be like it and have a life of
The speaker in Yeats’s’ “When You Are Old” is utterly captivated by the woman he depicts as being old in the poem. His amorous attitude toward her is unchanging, yet afflictive because he cannot get her to understand his undying love for her. Furthermore, these feelings are gracefully portrayed through dreamy imagery, a bittersweet tone, a gentle quatrain form, and soft diction.
Readers of Keats’s story begin to realize that the fear of a young death is a demon that haunts us all. This was Keats’s goal as a romantic writer: to connect with the reader, to portray his ideas in the form of art, and to make the reader see from his point of view. With his use of colorful figurative language, such as repetition, imagery, and personification, Keats accomplishes his goal. The reason that Keats is so successful in painting a clear picture is because he “uses his imagination to write” (King). By writing his poem in the form of a “Shakespearean sonnet consisting of three quatrains” (King), Keats, like any great artist, clearly states the point he is trying to make. Apprehension of a young demise is a plague that haunts us all. In “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to be,” Keats takes our hands and reassures us that we are not
Comparing Wordsworth and Keats’ Romantic Poetry. Both Wordsworth and Keats are romantic Poets, they express ideas on nature and send us the message to respect it. They say we have to admire the beauty of nature in different ways. Wordsworh uses simpler language in his poems wether to express simple or complex ideas, by which we understand he aimed his poems to lower classes. Keats instead, uses much more complex language to describe and express his ideas, so we know he aimed his poems to the educated.
The color purple evokes feelings of tranquility to the speaker as he gazes at the purple sky. In addition, Yeats also uses sound devices to express the nature’s soothing tones. At Innisfree, the “cricket sings” in the mornings and evenings are filled with sounds of “linnet’s wings.” It is so silent and still at Innisfree that even the tiniest of insects and animals could be heard. The cricket that sings in the mornings makes the atmosphere happier and melodious as it does not just buzz, but it “sings.”
The imaginative speaker in John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” embarks on a journey with a nightingale and connects his own life to the bird’s. His responses to the nightingale changes as he questions human misery, ways to escape cruel reality, and even the finality of death. Furthermore, these dynamic responses are illustrated by the diction, imagery, and tone found in the poem while the narrator plunges into an expedition of self-discovery. Initially, the speaker desires for wine to transition him from being burdened by the world to experiencing the freedom and carelessness alongside the nightingale in the night sky.
In William Butler Yeats poem “Leda and the Swan”, he uses the fourteen lines of the traditional sonnet form in a radical, modernist style. He calls up a series of unforgettable, bizarre images of an immediate physical event using abstract descriptions in brief language. Through structure and language Yeats is able to paint a powerful sexual image to his readers without directly giving the meaning of the poem.
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.
In the description of historiographies and social theories in the longer poems of John Keats, Kathleen Béres Rogers argues in “John Keats and the Ideas of the Enlightenment” that the "sociological drive of [Keats's] poetry is an inheritance from the Enlightenment” (Rogers, 2012, p. 163). Here Fermanis tried to trace Keats's working both with and against of Enlightenment legacy and in particular of its progressive, linear model of history. Keats's narrative provoked from a savage, feudal society to an emphasis on sensation and feeling. Endymion was indebted much to the Enlightenment and he used his sensitivity in order to sympathize with human suffering. He found his true love, Diana, only after he used this sympathy in order to love a real
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.