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
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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
Nevertheless, in the poem ‘Nesting time’, Stewart interprets a personal experience in first person of the appearance of a bird that lands upon his daughter and forgets the thought of the harsh world. Stewart’s descriptive language repeatedly explains the poem as if seen in his viewpoint, beginning with an interjection, ‘oh’ communicating of his incredulity of an ‘absurd’ bird. Symbolizing the bird with strong coloured imagery its ‘mossy green, sunlit’, described to be bright and joyful, with sweetness shown with the type of bird, ‘honey-eater’, Douglas Stewart takes the time to describe its admiration juxtaposed to the dangerous world surrounding it. While visualizing the birds actions, ‘pick-pick-pick’ of alliteration and repetition of its
The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the
MacNeice’s poem is set in the southwest of England, on a hill with a chalk horse carved into it. It is during the height of summer, when the grasshoppers are buzzing and the children are playing outside. The character is a boy or a group of boys, and they are riding bicycles down a hill near to the chalk horse. The structure of the poem is quite disjointed, with only five sentences throughout three stanzas.
‘Up the Wall’ by Bruce Dawe and ‘In the Park’ by Gwen Harwood both utilise the structure of the poem, dialogue and imagery to explore the idea of personal limitation and the loss of identity and love that accompanies maternal and domestic responsibility. Both poems have a third person persona where the use of “She” can indicate the mother’s universal sense of alienation and drudgery, which is further emphasised through the miserable and despairing tones of the poem. The incorporation of a generalised, impersonal pronoun adds to the evident struggle of separating her maternal identity from her identity as an individual. The poem ‘In the Park’ by Gwen Harwood is constructed in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet with an iambic pentameter and a rhyme
Now that you have read the poem and considered the meanings of the lines, answer the following questions in a Word doc or in your assignment window:
Such a long explanation seems out of place in a poem full of fast-paced action, supernatural beheadings, seductive temptresses, and jolly hunts. The narrator realizes this but plunges into his description after inserting a disclaimer: ``And why the pentangle is proper to that peerless prince / I intend now to tell, though detain me it must'' (30. 623-4). This alerts the reader to pay attention, that the symbolic meaning of the pentangle is important to a proper understanding of thenarrator's message.
This metaphor powerfully inverts the traditional notion of a heroic knight, placing emphasis both on Crichton Smith 's own failure and upon the comparison of the tenement to a prison tower. In addition to this, the poet also indicates that he visited his mother on 'each second Sunday ' which again uses alliteration to draw our attention to the infrequency of his visits. These techniques are skilfully employed to given a clear indication of the poet 's own guilt. And the main focus of this guilt can be clearly seen in the final image of the stanza.
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.
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
The poem begins with the poet noticing the beauty around her, the fall colors as the sun sets “Their leaves and fruits seemed painted, but was true, / Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue;” (5-6). The poet immediately relates the effects of nature’s beauty to her own spiritual beliefs. She wonders that if nature here on Earth is so magnificent, then Heaven must be more wonderful than ever imagined. She then views a stately oak tree and
This poem is also about Art, and the Irish people's response to it. It is structured around the contrast between the Yeats' dream to write for the Irish people, and the reality.
“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”
“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.
The speaker furthermore conveys the idea that nature is a grandeur that should be recognized by including the element of imagery. The poet utilizes imagery as a technique to appeal to reader’s sense of sight . It is “the darkest evening of the year” (line 8) and a traveller and his horse stop “between the woods and frozen lake” (line 7). By writing with details such as these, readers are capable of effortlessly envisioning the peaceful scenery that lies before the speaker. The persona then draws on reader’s sense of sound. “The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.” The illustration allows readers to not only see,
Here is the interpretation and analysis of the poem based on the sections that respect the grammar and meaning of its sentences: