How Is Yeats's Life Reflected In His Poetry

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Noble Peace Prize winner William Butler Yeats poetry was revolutionary to Ireland. He made his poems distinctly modern while also referencing the past and almost comparing and contrasting how society once was and what it is in the present day. I will be looking at the poems, ‘The Lake of Innisfree’ , ‘Easter, 1916’ and ‘Adam’s Curse’ to explore how Yeats lived in a time of national and international upheaval and how this is reflected in his poetry. Born in Dublin in 1865, Yeats has been described as the inheritor and founder of traditions. ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ is a poem about the loving the country-side while actually being the city. It is written in a formal rhyme scheme with three stanzas made up of four lines, quatrains. For example, …show more content…

Time is big theme in this poem as it shows Yeats technique of looking to the past when writing about the present. Time has a wearying effect in the poem and the speaker is reminded of his love life and how it did not end up how he had once planned it. He says that time has “worn his heart out.”

“We saw the embers of daylight die”

The tone of the poem changes here as the day comes to an end. Yeats started to compare and connect time with negative things leaving the three characters in the poem to sit in quietness and think about the effects that time has had on their lives. (Jeffares and Wilson) William Butler Yeats explored the formation of the new state and its complications in his poetry, his comparing and contrasting of past and present is what defined him in Irish literature. He became a revolutionary new voice for Ireland because of this. His belief in the art of poetry is what made him and still makes him powerfully influential

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