The Institute of Education
Yeats’s Poetry
1.
Themes
Many of Yeats’s poems deal with great universal themes –
themes that are timeless and which concern all human
kind of themes such as:
● The mortality of man
● The dream of immortality
● The transience of all things human: youth; old age; death
● Time and its destructive effect on youth and beauty
● The longing for lost youth
● The conflict between body and soul
● Escapism – escaping from old age
● Romantic dreams of a perfect existence
● Politics
● Greed
● Generosity
● Heroism
So Yeats’s poems range over the whole span of human concerns.
2.
Lyric Quality
– * Be sure to be able to explain what this means.
This lyric quality makes Yeats’s poems warm, intimate and immediate.
He personalises universal themes, grounds them in his own situation and in his
own experience. And he conveys these themes in the first person, thus making
his poem intimate, personal and immediate.
* Be able to give examples.
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3.
Dramatic, Dynamic Quality
Yeats’s poems are alive, dramatic, dynamic.
Two main factors contribute to this dramatic quality:
a) Use of the first person makes the poems immediate and alive.
Yeats is a character in the poems, speaking directly to us in the
first person.
* Give examples.
The Clash of Opposites
The clash of opposites gives the poems a dynamic quality.
He constantly plays off one idea against its opposite, giving the poems a
dynamic quality.
* Give examples
4.
Rich Images and Metaphors
Be able to give examples and, above all, be able to say what message
the images and metaphors convey.
Very important
If you are asked to deal with symbols, be able to give some examples and be
able to say what the particular symbol represents.
▲ Ancient Byzantium is a symbol. What does it represent?
▲ The swans in the ‘Wild Swans at Coole’ are a symbol of timelessness,
of perfect love.
▲ The “living stream” in ‘Easter 1916’ is a symbol. It represents the
whole fullness, flux and richness of ordinary living life.
▲ The “stone” in the midst of the “living stream” represents something
without feeling. It represents the inflexible, fanatical determination of
the revolutionaries who may have abandoned their humanity in the
pursuit of their political dream.
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▲ The Gazebo – “We the great gazebo built,” – represents the cultured,
civilised world of literature and the arts which Yeats claims that he and
his Anglo-Irish friends created.
▲ The “honey bees” in ‘The Stare’s Nest by my Window’ – represent
harmony, sweetness, creativity and the natural order of things which
Yeats longs for during the time of Civil War which is destructive and
unnatural.
▲ “O’Leary” in ‘September 1913’, is a powerful symbol representing
vision, patriotism, generosity – all of which the merchants of the poem
lack.
5.
Memorable Quality
Yeats’s poems have a memorable quality. Many of his lines and phrases stick in
the memory after one or two readings. They dominate the memory; they
colonise the memory.
* Give examples
6.
Descriptive Language
Give some examples.
Use the opening lines of ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’.
You could take some examples from ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’
Be sure to use some of his images.
He is using images to describe e.g.
“A tattered coat upon a stick, …….”
“………………………………….The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees”
7.
Tension and conflict in Yeat’s Poems
We have dealt with this when we said that Yeats’s poems are built on contrast –
on the conflict between opposites.
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Conviction, Force, Authority in Yeats’s Language
Yeats’s poems carry authority, conviction, sureness.
This springs from:
a) The use of the first person
* Give examples
b) The use of direct statements.
* Give examples
c) Powerful, forceful images, metaphors and symbols.
* Give examples
d) The use of questions including rhetorical questions.
* Give examples
e) The use of dramatic contrast.
* Give examples
Yeats’s dealing with Public Issues
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‘September 1913’
‘The Stare’s Nest by my Window’
‘Easter 1916’
‘The Second Coming’
Yeats dealing with private issues
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‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’
‘Politics’
‘The Wild Swans at Coole’
‘Sailing to Byzantium’
‘In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewich’
2014, The Institute of Education, Denis Creaven
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