William Butler Yeats

Q: How does W.B Yeats make a contrast between the perpetual youth of the swans and the growing age of the poet?

Answer: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet and dramatist, and Nobel laureate, who was a leader of the Irish Renaissance and one of the foremost writers of the 20th century. Apart from being a great poet, W.B Yeats was also a renowned playwright of Ireland. In “The Wild Swan at Coole” Yeats presents his anguish of aging. This problem has been suggested through comparison and contrast between the poet and the swans in a lake at Coole Park in Lady Gregory’s estate. This Irish poet deals with a contrast between man and nature, between wild swans at Coole and himself and between morality and immortality in this poem. This poem is taken from the volume of the poem entitled “The Wild Swan at Coole”. The poet uses the swans as a symbol of the changeless pattern of the nature. He uses them as a kind of ‘luminous elusive image’. This poem presents the change in the life of the poet between 1897and 1916. He first stayed at the Coole Park in 1897 and then again in 1916 he visited the park. During his second visit after nineteen years, he felt that he became old and many things around him changed or underwent to a change. During his first visit at the park he saw 59 swans in their merry time of the youth. He also saw the natural scenery in its autumnal beauty. Likewise the poet was in a romantic mood with all the merry time of his youth. He was then more romantic almost like the swans, but with the passage of time after 19 years everything has changed, the poet has become old. He is now burdened with the hard realities of life. He has gathered bitter experience and become very sad for the painful love stories in his past life. He has lost the romantic joy of youth. He becomes sadder to look at the happy and lively swans. They are still free from the hard realities of life. The burden of aging has not touched them. They are still not bowed down by bitter realities. Wherever they move, the same romantic passion goes with them. This scene of the joyous swan leads the poet to think about himself. He becomes gloomy. He recalls that when he visited this place nineteen years ago he was as joyous as these swans. His feelings are now crushed. He is now deprived of time when he was as joyous as the swans and the sweet love with whom he was fallen and wanted to fall. In his voice- “I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a litter head”. Towards the end of the poem, the poet universalizes his theme and immortalizes the youthful joy of the swans. Just as John Keats nightingale goes singing from generations to generations, so also Yeats swans will go on enjoying the same romantic spirit. A swan may die; another swan will come to play the same romantic game in this world. Symbolically the poet upholds the immortality of the swans and his arrival again someday after his death to find the delightful swans.