WB Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
In which Yeats seeks to live a far more peaceful and idyllic life on the so called ‘Lake Isle’ of Innisfree. Life there would be peaceful and quiet, far removed from the hustle and bustle of urban life
Written in the ABAB rhyming format
Themes: Escape, nature, Irishness
Quotes;
‘I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree’ - Yeats longs to travel there and live his own, peaceful life
‘And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: nine bean-rows I will have there’ - he wants to live a life of self-sufficiency, entirely his own
‘And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow’ - he wants a calm and peaceful life, nice and slow
‘I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore’ - even when he’s away from Innisfree, he still longs and thinks often about the place
‘While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep hearts core’ - when he’s in the city, he thinks back to the freedom of country life
September 1913
Written in the midst of the 1913 Strike and Lockout, Yeats expresses his displeasure with the current state of the modern Irishman. He believes them all to be obsessed with their own wealth, an unwillingly to die like the men of previous generations
He believes the men of previous revolutions are a lost breed, and the Ireland of generations past is long dead
Written in the ABABCDCD rhyming format
Themes: Irishness, war/violence, lament
Quotes:
‘And add the halfpence to the pence and prayer to shivering prayer until you have dried the marrow from the bone’ - the men of today are obsessed with material things and
‘Romantic Irelands dead and gone, it’s with O’Leary in the grave’ - Yeats truly believes theres nothing left of the Ireland he romanticizes. Repeated throughout
‘Yet they were of a different kind’ - once again reiterating that Yeats believes that the modern Irishman is quite pathetic in comparison to previous generation
‘For whom the hangman’s rope was hung’ -indicating that these men literally gave their lives for the cause
‘For this Edward Fitzgerald died, and Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, all that delirium of the brave?’ - naming several rebels by name, all of who died for their causes
‘But let them be, they’re dead and gone, they’re with O’Leary in the grave’ - slight change to the repetition, Yeats is acknowledging that everything is gone now
The Wild Swans at Coole
Written about a lake in the home of his friend Lady Augusta Gregory, he often visits the lake and this time, upon looking out at the swans, he thinks to how he is losing his youth
It’s also a lament to his lack of a partner, and how he is jealous of the swans who mate for life
Written in the ABCBDD rhyming format
Themes: Nature, lament, old age
Quotes;
‘The trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are dry, under the October twilight’ - twilight and October are times that are latter in the year/day, indicating that Yeats is coming into the later years of his life
‘Upon the brimming water among the stones, are nine-and fifty swans’ - clearly, the lake is absolutely packed with swans
‘The nineteenth autumn has come upon me since I first made my count’ - clearly he’s been visiting these swans at the lake for a long time, and he’s changed in those nineteen years
‘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…’- Yeats himself knows its been a long long time since he first came here
‘Lover by lover’ - the swans are all in pairs. Theres 59, though, so one swan is alone, quite like Yeats himself
‘Passion or conquest, wander where they will, attend upon them still’ - the swans and their lovers will never fall out of love, and will spend the rest of their loves together
In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz
Written about his friends after their deaths, Yeats laments the fact both beautiful women seemingly threw that all away to follow a political life
Written in ABBA rhyming format
Themes: Old age, lament, women in politics
Quotes;
‘Two girls in kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle’ - he looks back fondly on the two women/s beauty in their youth, particularly Eva
‘The older is condemned to death, pardoned, drags out lonely years conspiring among the ignorant’ - Markievicz, who spends her later years amongst rebels
‘I know not what the younger dreams, some Utopia’ - Eva is interested in women’s suffrage, dreaming of an ideal, equal world
‘And she seems when withered old and skeleton-gaunt’ - both women have become aged and ugly through their involvement in politics
‘Dear shadows, now you know it all, all the folly of the fight with a common right or wrong’ - speaks directly to the ghosts of both women, telling them they should have listened to him and stayed silent and beautiful
Politics
About how Yeats is conversing with two intellectuals, who both talk of dire war in the near future. But Yeats cannot find himself focused on them, instead he’s distracted by a woman far younger than him who he can no longer pursue
Written in ABCB rhyming format
Themes: Old age, lament, war and violence
Quotes;
‘How can I, that girl standing there, my attention fix on Roman or Russian or Spanish politics’ - Yeats is simply enraptured by this girl, and is unable to focus
‘yet here’s a travelled man that knows what he talks about. And there’s a politician that has read and thought’ - both men clearly know what they’re talking about
‘And maybe what they say is true of war and wars alarms’ - hints to the upcoming second world war
‘But O that I were young again, and held her in my arms’ - due to his old age, he can no longer pursue this young woman