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What Is The Theme Of Coole Park

Decent Essays

Assignment 1: Close Reading “ Coole Park, 1929” is a poem written by W.B Yeats. This poem is part of the works the poet wrote in the third phase of his career; a phase characterized by the retrospective of his personal experience within the framework of Irish history. Through this poem, W.B Yeats broaches the theme of memory, the artistic creation and pays tribute to Lady Gregory and her estate.

Memory is a central theme in “Coole Park”. This poem is constituted of four stanzas of eight verses each, all structured in Iambic pentameters. Each stanza is written in Ottava Rima, a very popular poetic form associated to Italian epic poems during the Renaissance. This rhyming stanza form refers to the past and permits to the poet to broach …show more content…

Although the ‘swallow’s flight”, the “sycamore” and the “lime tree” are linked by their belonging to men’s natural environment, the musicality of the stanza, notable through the use of full end-rhymes; “flight” (v1) and “night” (v3), unifies these elements. The motif of the swallow’s flight is an allegory of the artistic creation and is developed throughout the whole poem. In this first stanza, the rhythmical harmony is increased by numerous alliterations such as the alliterations in “l”, m” (v 1 to 3) and “s” (v 3 to 7); “Great works constructed there in nature’ spite”(v5). From the second verse, W.B Yeats evokes the passage of time through the figure of the “aged woman and her house”(v2). Here, the poet depicts Lady Gregory, the aristocratic owner of Coole Park. Sold in 1927 to the Irish state by her daughter in law, Lady Gregory was forced to give …show more content…

In the ninth verse, the poet gives a symbolic dimension to a blade; “There Hyde before he had beaten into prose; That noble blade the Muses buckled on”(v9-10). Here, the alliteration in “b” reinforces the musicality of the verse. In the verses twelve and thirteen, the poet paints a portrait of Douglas Hyde and John Synge. The full rhyme “pose” (v11) and “those” (v13) associates the two characters. The repetition of the words “There” and “that” in the stanza emphasizes the descriptive dimension of the verses (v9, v10, v11, v13). The musicality of the stanza is enhanced by the internal rhyme of the verse 14; “Impetuous men, Shawe-Taylor and Hugh Lane”. In the third stanza, these literary figures are compared to swallows; “They came like swallows and like swallows went” (v17). This imagery of the swallows echoes with the first verse of the poem. Lady Gregory’s depiction of a poet's guide is emphasized by an enjambment between the verse eighteen and nineteen. Finally, Coole Park is described as the heart of artistic creation through a comparison to a compass point attracting “half a dozen” of poets in creative effervescence

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