William Butler Yeats, a successful Irish poet who received the Noble prize for literature in 1923. ‘The Wilde Swans at Coole’ is a name of a poem he wrote also the name of a whole book of poems. Yeats was enthralled to write the poem ‘The Wilde Swans at Coole’ after observing 59 wild swans on a still lake that mirrors the sky at Coole Park, which was an estate owned by Lady Augusta Gregory in Ireland. The poem has five stanzas, and the rhyme scheme is a-b-c-b-d-d in every stanza. There is a mixture of iambic pentameter, iambic trimeter and iambic tetrameter in the poem. The stanzas are modified ballad stanzas plus a rhymed couplet which is well-suited for the poem’s reflective tone and melancholy mood. Also, it can be said that this poem is a lyric because of its musical tone and its direct emphasis on the writer’s personal feelings but at the same time written autobiographically. ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ not only transports us to a placid lake but to a very personal place in our hearts where we regret lost time. In this poem Yeats shows us his concern of change, infinity of beauty and freedom.
Firstly, he illustrates his concern of change ‘Autumn’,’October’ and ‘Twilight’ shows us that everything must come to an end involuntarily and the passing of time is inevitable. The opening stanza shows its sadness and melancholy due to its ballad construction which illustrates perfectly the nostalgic mood. Yeats, used symbolism in the form of a gyre to show the gradual change from
" This opening sets the tone for the rest of the poem, conveying a sense of melancholy and nostalgia. The poet observes the tree as a symbol of natural beauty and simplicity in contrast
The poem describes the process of spring, so natrually the speaer notes details of spring such as the sun shining on their neck, the spikes of the crocus blooming, and the pleasant smell of the earth. However, the poem twists the archetype of spring by having this period of rebith remind the speaker of death. The speaker sees the life that springs brings as insignificant. The speaker acknowledges the beauty spring brings is not enough to quiet their thoughts on death, the speaker can only note how the ground is filled with the brains of men eaten by maggots, and how life itself is nothing. The speaker sees life as an empty cup, and they are not pacified by the life and joy springs brings as they remian unfulfilled.
Allow me to present to you the poem “November” by Lorna Davis. This beautiful piece uses vivid imagery to describe the desolate and melancholy turn of seasons between October and November. It is a classic Shakespearean sonnet, made up of three quatrains with perfect ABAB rhyme schemes, a volta, and a couplet. The author has really taken advantage of this structure to amplify the messaging by grouping together lines with similar meanings to create poetic rhythm as well as isolating certain parts to allow them to stand out more. If you look at lines 3-6, there is a motif of things deteriorating; the trees “have grayed”, the sunlight is “cold and tired”, and the “fruitful time’s approaching end”.
I love all the metaphors he made in this poem such as the ladder to heaven (apple-picking requires a level which Robert Frost was referring it to the ladder to heaven) and the seasonal interpretation (winter is death and spring is rebirth) that connects to the natural process of decaying and
In the first stanza’s, the narrator’s voice and perspective is more collective and unreliable, as in “they told me”, but nonetheless the references to the “sea’s edge” and “sea-wet shell” remain constant. Later on the poem, this voice matures, as the “cadence of the trees” and the “quick of autumn grasses” symbolize the continuum of life and death, highlighting to the reader the inevitable cycle of time. The relationship that Harwood has between the landscape and her memories allows for her to delve deeper into her own life and access these thoughts, describing the singular moments of human activity and our cultural values that imbue themselves into landscapes. In the poem’s final stanza, the link back to the narrator lying “secure in her father’s arms” similar to the initial memory gives the poem a similar cyclical structure, as Harwood in her moment of death finds comfort in these memories of nature. The water motif reemerges in the poem’s final lines, as “peace of this day will shine/like light on the face of the waters.”
This line in the poem, is showing us how nature gives us insight into the meaning of life. In this case, the spring season demonstrates to us the mysteries behind the energy and beauty of youth, and how the blossoming of human life begins. This perceived interpretation is completely backed up by the overarching theme of life and death in this poem (Bryant). This theme being brought about by the overwhelming use of the romanticists tool, metaphor and association (Tóth). Life is not the only mystery, according to the poem, that is being unearthed by nature.
Looking back on childhood memories is one of the best ways to bring on a wave of nostalgia. Bobbi Katz does just that in her poem “October”. Through the imagery used, she is able to convey a feeling of nostalgia when it comes to significant memories that really define what October is. The beginning of fall usually means the beginning of early sunsets.
The writer talks of when daylight begins and what he thinks about the beginning of the day. The hopeless lines of the poem are not describing
Starting at line 5 and going to line 8, Keats imagines love as something written on the night sky. He starts by personifying the sky, in line 5 he says “..the night’s starred face,” which allows him to connect the sky to a person or in this case a human emotion. He brings the emotion of love and the concept of romance into his poem in line 6, “..symbols of high romance,” and in the following two lines he shows how unreachable love is if death is to come to him sooner rather than later. By placing the love he, and everybody else, longs for in the night sky, and vast and mysterious place, he makes the journey to finding love a long hard one. A journey that could never be fully accomplished if death was to come too
Ambiguity in John Keats poems Applied to the poems To Autumn and La Belle Dame Sans Merci The following essay treats the problem of ambiguity in John Keats poems To Autumn and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Ambiguity is treated by the structuralism school and is presented as an intrinsic, inalienable character of any self-focused message, briefly a corollary feature of poetry. Not only the message itself but also its addresser and addressee become ambiguous.
“Her hardest hue to hold” and “So dawn goes down to day” are examples of alliteration in the poem. I believe that “Her hardest hue to hold”, means that it’s hard to keep nature green. It uses the letter “h” a lot to make this line stand out. Same thing for”,So dawn goes down to day,” which I believe means that a new day has begun. Alliteration is used to show the theme by saying that you can’t hold on to something forever.
Imagery and tone plays a huge role for the author in this poem. It’s in every stanza and line in this poem. The tone is very passionate, joyful and tranquil.
In the third line he states “spring summer autumn winter” and in line 11 “autumn winter spring summer”. Cummings switches the order of the months a third time in the last stanza creating the idea that time runs on an endless cycle. Cummings implements this change in the seasons order at random times in the poem to remind readers of the infinite quality of
“A Memory of Youth”: Yeats and Erotic Experience A cloud blown from the cut-throat north Suddenly hid Love’s moon away. The “cloud”—amorphous and obstructing—cuts into the scene, as well as the poem, with a sudden violence, in order to block the image of “Love’s moon”. The cloud itself cannot have definite dimensions, as it exists to only hide the moon, casting the speaker of the poem, his love and the cloud itself in a continuous darkness. It is in this darkness that the speaker of the poem finds his own perception and experiences clouded, indicating his blind submission to erotic love in lieu of a more illuminating, comprehensive “Love”.
Modern poetry is in open form and free verse. It is pessimistic in tone, portraying loss in faith and psychological struggle which is quite different from the fixed forms and meters of traditional poetry. Secondly, modern poetry is fragmented in nature, containing juxtaposition, inter-textuality and allusion. It has no proper beginning, middle or end. Thirdly, modern poetry is predominantly intellectual in its appeal, rather than emotive.