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Beauty In William Butler Yeats The Rose Of The World

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This essay will examine the theory of beauty presented in William Butler Yeats 's poem, “The Rose of The World”. The poem is part of the Rose poems collection and it centres on Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne who was, equally to Yeats, famous for her passionate nationalist politics and also for her beauty. Although they grew apart after 14 years and both married other people, she remained a powerful figure in his poetry. I should like to show in this essay how Yeats himself perceived the beauty of a mortal woman and how he idolised her making her equal to God.
At the very beginning of the poem Yeats asks “Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?” In this question he expresses the idea that absolute beauty is not short lived and it is not unattainable. The power women’s beauty has on men is everlasting “For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide” (lines 2, 3) and …show more content…

She is the ultimate creation of God and He “made the world to be a grassy road, Before her wandering feet”, before there were any archangels she wandered the world as the epitome of perfection. She was the reason He made the world and therefore Archangels should bow before her beauty as they do bow before God because she is something to be praised. Yeats attempts to make her fall in love with him as she is the epitome of perfection for him but she keeps ‘’wandering’’ not willing to truly commit to him. Love is uncertain as she is. He juxtaposes the mortal world we live in and the immortal world Maude lives in and argues about the superiority of the eternal beauty she possesses over the lives of other people. Unlike other people, whose life “passes like a dream”, Maud Gonne’s lonely face will live on forever. She is the rose of the world and it was created in her honour for she is the most beautiful being God

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