The Winding Stair And Other Poems

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 work of William Butler Yeats is full of descriptive, evocative imagery, deep personal feelings and strong political opinions. Yeats sets up dynamic contrasts in every one of his poems which for me makes his poetry interesting and thought-provoking. I found these traits particularly evident in “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” as Yeats discusses a variety of poems, prose and plays written by himself throughout his life. These works of art represent the full breadth of Yeats’ work - The themes of life, death immortality and of conflicting dualities. Bloom (1970) proposes the theory that Yeats shares with the Romantic poets “a conviction that the most poetic images are necessarily those of ‘unfulfilled and unfillable desire” and according to Bloom Yeats shares with Shelley his deepest fear of growing old and losing his ability to write beautiful meaningful poetry and to be immortalised through his work. This genuine self-doubt in his ability is particularly evident in this poem. The resignation and fear is implicit in the concluding rhyming couplet in each stanza.,

The images of a war-torn landscape and the anonymity of the mother murdered at her door evoke the feelings of fear felt by readers in the time. Bradley writes “Yeats’ language broadens the context so that so that it could be any mother and child in the ravaged landscape of wartime” (115). The violet nature of the poem provides a domineering relation to place, one which feels inescapable. According to Michael Wood, violence in Yeats’ poetry “whether personal, political or apocalyptic—is always sudden and surprising, visible, unmistakable, inflicts or promises injury and is fundamentally uncontrollable.”

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.

As people near the time of their deaths, they begin to reflect upon the history and events of their own lives. Both John Keats’ “When I have Fears” and Henry Longfellow’s “Mezzo Cammin” reflect upon the speakers’ fears and thoughts of death. However, the conclusions between these two poems end quite differently. Although both reflect upon Death’s grasp, Keats’ displays an appreciation and subtle satisfaction with the wonders of life, while Longfellow morbidly mourns his past inactions and fears what events the future may bring.

Understanding Chatterton’s artistry not only informed Wilde’s creative work; it also shaped his knowledge of the Romantic poets, whose works he had long admired. If Wilde’s interest in Keats and Shelley stemmed from his university days, through

In the first stanza Yeats expresses his conflicting loathing and admiration for modernity through the juxtaposition of “vivid faces” and “grey houses”. This represents the possibilities that modernity can bring; the revitalising of the community or the destruction of tradition and age old energy already lost by the modifications in the city. The repetition of the phrase “A terrible beauty is born” in the first and fourth stanzas articulate this inner turmoil revolving around modernity. This oxymoronic declaration is emphasised throughout the text by Yeats’ confusion towards the rebellion and its necessity. The fourth stanza embodies this conflict, removing the previously represented idea that life in pre-rebellion Ireland was a “casual comedy”, alluding to an Elizabethan play where the characters were content. By asking the rhetoric questions “was it needless death” and “O when may [British rule] suffice?” Yeats parallels the unresolved contradiction of “terrible beauty”. However, this sensitive treatment of conflict allows the retainment of ambiguity and can be related to any change within life, hence allowing audiences to superimpose their own beliefs and ideas into the poem. Yeats continues to explore his aversion towards modernism in The Second Coming with the appointment of a new “gyre” standing as the symbol for a new age. The fear of

Through the use of vigorous, ritualistic imagery and war-like diction, Yeats accentuates the inauspicious course of events the world has faced. Yeats, in the first stanza, uses violent and warlike imagery and diction to illustrates that the world is on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation. Yeats describes that the world is going to “fall apart,” and that “mere anarchy is [loosened] upon the world,” and ‘everywhere...innocence is drowned.” The use of violent diction in the first stanza contributes to the concept that world is going to end, and that humanity cannot recover from the destruction the world has caused, but Yeats uses ritualistic imagery to describe “a rough beast” with “a shape [of a] lion body and head of a man” to show that this “New Age” will bring some hope. William Yeats uses this violent and ritualistic imagery and diction to illustrate that in order to bring a new era, the old epoch must die violently, which is his concept of “the second coming.” Yeats believes that a violent revolution will bring hope to a new era. Similarly, how the Russian Revolution was destructive and brought an end to an era and started a new age which bought Russia to new heights, Yeats believes that a violent end of the world can bring the new world to new

While both Keats and Longfellow’s poems, “When I Have Fears” and “Mezzo Cammin,” focus on the unfulfillment of goals in life and the menacing appearance of death, their final assumptions of death are related but different. Both poems share similarity focusing on the poets’ thoughts as they contemplate the inevitability of their deaths and whether their accomplishments have meaning after death, but the poets exhibit a different attiutude towards their subject. Keats fears that he will not be able to fully accomplish his life goals before he dies, but he acknowledges the frivolity of earthly aspirations when faced with death. On the other hand, Longfellow, while also mourning the loss of his chance to accomplish his goals, maintains comfort in the past compared to the uncertain future. Longfellow maintains a grim, pessimistic tone throughout his poem juxtaposes the almost hopeful tone Keats exhibits throughout his poem. Through the use of imagery, literary devices, and diction, Keats and Longfellow convey their overall contrasting attitudes toward death.

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

Young Yeats spent much of his childhood in Sligo, Ireland. It was in Sligo where his earliest visions began to form. Through the Pollexfen’s, William was able to experience life on the water, as his grandfather owned a fleet of ships and the Sligo Steam Navigation Company. As the grandson of this sea merchant, the sailors onboard the fleets, as well as the servants back at home, would all treat young William like royalty. The Pollexfen’s world was complete with yachts and summer homes. Despite separation from his father for much of his youth, William was without want. He was free to wander about to discover the beauties, and explore the myths and legends of this enchanted place. William would miss Sligo immensely when this family would move

Yeats’s ambiguous attitude to the English literary tradition is similar to his position on his past. At first glance, poems in The Green Helmet and Other Poems seem more candid and more personal than Yeats’s earlier poems, in that many poems are both his confessions and declaration. Many poems in the collection feature a speaker who disapprovingly looks back at his old time in introspection. For instance, in the poem “The Coming of Wisdom with Time,” the speaker refers to his old time as “the lying days of my youth” (Norton, 38). A similar sentiment can be found in the poem “All things can Tempt Me,” in which the speaker laments that “a woman’s face”—love, and “the seeming needs of my fool-driven land”—nationalism, have once tempted him away from the “craft of verse” (Norton, 40). In the poem “Reconciliation,” too, the speaker recalls that “you” (presumably Maud Gonne) took away the verses that could move many readers. Being deaf and blind, the speaker “could find / nothing to make a song about but kings, / Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things / that were like memories of you” (Norton, 37). In these three poems, the speaker is incapacitated by his love for a woman, for his country, or both. As the speaker of “The Fascination of What’s

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.

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

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