In Memory Of W B Yeats Auden Analysis

In Memory of W. B. Yeats is an elegy written for Yeats. Auden praises Yeats’ talent for poetry and he talks about his inspirations such as Ireland. In metaphorical sense he says even nature could not stand to his death. Auden speaks about Yeats’ last moments in one of the stanzas. After that he emphasize his immortality because of his art, even though he is death people will admire his art and he would not be forgotten. Auden put on emphasis to another point by giving example from modern terms such as “bourse” and “brokers”. He criticizes the modern world and how everything is forgotten quickly. He says there is one thing we all agree is that the day of Yeats’ death is a sorrowful and dark one. In short, Auden’s aim is to write a modern elegy for a poet like Yeats and he believes Yeats deserves such elegy; he glorifies him with some themes about Yeats such as the sadness of nature after his death, sadness of people, his everlasting conflict with Ireland, criticism on modern world and importance of Yeats to the literature world. Auden gives the name of

Speaker begins this part by calling Yeats as “silly.” He says, Yeats is just like everyone else, he is just a human after all. When speaker says: “your gift survived it all: The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself.” This can mean that everything contributes to create our character everything about ourselves is the thing which makes us perfect. After these lines most important part of the poem comes. Speaker says: “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” Speaker is saying these lines like it is a fact which is known by everybody that Ireland is the main reason for Yeats to write poems. He hints that he wrote poems to change Ireland or to change Ireland in his own mind. For example Yeats wrote “Sailing to Byzantium” to show that Ireland his not a place for him to live. He created an imaginary place and wrote that