An Analysis of Yeats and Updike

In stanza four the poet is flashing back to his childhood and telling us some other words that he got in trouble for. “Other words that got me into trouble were fight and fright, wren and yarn.” (29-31) Even though he got in trouble by his teacher for not knowing the words, his mother helped him understand them in a different way. “Wren are small, plain birds.” (34) “My mother made birds out of yarn.” (37) Here he is shown how two different things can become the same thing.

The speaker in Yeats’s’ “When You Are Old” is utterly captivated by the woman he depicts as being old in the poem. His amorous attitude toward her is unchanging, yet afflictive because he cannot get her to understand his undying love for her. Furthermore, these feelings are gracefully portrayed through dreamy imagery, a bittersweet tone, a gentle quatrain form, and soft diction.

Some scholars wonder if the Leda and the Swan was a way Yeats used to show how he truly felt about Ireland’s downward spiral; how the English were destroying their culture and way of life. Scholars developed this theory based on the social-political issues going on between England and Ireland at the time the poem was written.

While Yeats becomes conscious of the violent truth of nature which results in death, by watching the swans, he is able to comfort himself by admiring how the swans are “unwearied” and “their hearts have not grown old.” When

Who knows when a Nobel Prize would have been given to an Irish man if it had not been for William Butler Yeats? William Butler Yeats is a great figure in the history of Irish poetry and playwriting. He wrote many poems and plays throughout his entire life. He was a very modernist man and many of his poems were based on this, they were ahead of his time beautiful and inspiring. What was behind William Butler Yeats success, and what phases did he have to go through to get there. This man has influenced many poems and plays, writing and he has also inspired so many people around the world.

In the final stanza, Yeats draws his most striking contrast of all to illustrate his message. He does this by following the descriptions of nature in its wildest form, of the previous stanzas, with those of the domestic atmosphere from which the child is being taken, in this stanza. Initially, Yeats established the setting of the poem in the first stanza by describing a place "Where flapping herons wake / The drowsy water rats" (5). This is contrasted in this stanza with images of "calves on the warm hillside / Or the kettle on the hob / Or... the brown mice" (45). Calves, kettles, and mice are all images that are associated with a domestic farm or a country home. Thus, this imagery is being used to portray how modern society has enslaved nature, controlling its freedom. Water rats and herons, on the other hand, are both wild and free animals that are found near water, the symbol

To begin with, in “Leda and the Swan” by W. B. Yeats, he depicts the rape of a

Of all the poets in our course, WB Yeats is easily our favorite. His poetry has a dynamic quality. Several aspects of his poetry that appeal the most to us are the political or polemical dimension to his work, his use of nature as a theme and his reflection on old age, body and the soul and finally his discussion on mysticism and reincarnation of the

bird’s fluttering with every breeze” which suggests that the lover is indecisive and is ready to run from a relationship. The figurative link between the speaker and the weathercock’s compass directions permits the central image of the poem to further encompass the romantic relationship defining the lover and the speaker. The speaker’s body is highlighted in the poem only in terms of this figurative ordering. It points to the fact that the lyricism of Jennings’s early short poems conceives written identity in terms of abstract voice, whose urge to expression holds a physical embodied self only as a basis of metaphorical material. Thus the poem adds a definition of what might be considered the Movement lyric, with its focus on discursive voice

Yeats assumes that the readers know about the Greek myth of Zeus, sky and weather god, taking the form of a swan to violate Leda, Aetolian princess who later becomes a famous Spartan Queen. The opening lines start off presumably in Leda’s perspective when he states, “A sudden blow” (Yeats 1), meaning that the Swan harshly approaches Leda and knocks her off her feet. We now can assume that the swan is larger than normal for it to have such extreme power to induce a great deal of force onto an unexpecting woman. In line 4, “He” (Yeats 4) is written for the first time so readers now know that the swan is of male nature; this explains the large size and strength of the swan. In the following stanza, through the first line Yeats chooses the word “vague” (Yeats 5) to describe how Leda is so terrified and disoriented when being violated by the swan. This can lead the reader to wonder if Leda could have even prevented the violation? The answer is clear, it would be incredibly absurd that she could have. When Yeats asks, “And how can body” (Yeats 7), he is

He wrote” there would be forgotten us, sadness is no longer coming; Soon will be far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the, as long as we are double white bird, dear, and in the surf”. However, this pursuit is always so bear, so full of romantic, not bear rich life and universal truth. His poems from the early natural express, to the old age of meditation concise, completed a real thought and art practice. As when he won the Nobel Prize for literature, said: "now I'm old and sick, the form is not worth a curse, but therefore I Muse and young." In his view, "except for the sun had nothing, but he didn't escape from reality, also in reality. He knew that, only put the needle in the meat, because, mist and tears, to walk to god." In the bound for Byzantine, Yeats in the anatomy of himself: "a decay, the old man is a waste, it is a broken coat, on a stick, clap your hands unless the soul as a song, to its skins sings louder every crack bursts. In pursuit of truth, of his ruthlessness, have the courage to expose the weakness of human

Yeats is essentially a poet of ‘modern complexities’. His transition from ‘romantic’ to ‘modern’ is perhaps the failure of hope or vision he had for Ireland and thus, he resorted to the modern tone of distress and hopelessness similar to the case of Eliot in Hollow Men. Inactivity of the generation made him suffocated and thus, he wrote Sailing to Byzantium, a utopian civilization for the old yet energetic, the city of Byzantium.

John Keats was a poet in the 1800’s who was way ahead of his time. Keats left his indelible mark on literature. Even though Keats lived a hard, short life, it never stopped him from writing good literature. “He had no advantages of birth, wealth or education; he lost his parents in childhood, watched one brother die of tuberculosis and the other emigrate to America. Poverty kept him from marrying the woman he loved. And he achieved lasting fame only after his early death in 1821. Yet grief and hardship never destroyed his passionate commitment to poetry”(Hanson) Keats writing was different then other poets of his time, his meaning and messages were way ahead of his

Although the ‘swallow’s flight”, the “sycamore” and the “lime tree” are linked by their belonging to men’s natural environment, the musicality of the stanza, notable through the use of full end-rhymes; “flight” (v1) and “night” (v3), unifies these elements. The motif of the swallow’s flight is an allegory of the artistic creation and is developed throughout the whole poem. In this first stanza, the rhythmical harmony is increased by numerous alliterations such as the alliterations in “l”, m” (v 1 to 3) and “s” (v 3 to 7); “Great works constructed there in nature’ spite”(v5). From the second verse, W.B Yeats evokes the passage of time through the figure of the “aged woman and her house”(v2). Here, the poet depicts Lady Gregory, the aristocratic owner of Coole Park. Sold in 1927 to the Irish state by her daughter in law, Lady Gregory was forced to give

Keats deliberately confuses the reader’s assumptions of the poem by introducing a melancholic mood. The `melodious plot’ is emphasised through the rhythm of the poem and the extended use of vowel sounds prior to the `melodious plot. The repetition of `happy’ is almost a forceful emphasis to cancel the earlier negatives. Keat’s distinguished use of paradoxes, is evident here too: ` `tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness’. Keats has found joy in the innocence of the nightingale, who `among the leaves hast never known, the weariness, the fever and the fret here, where men sit and hear each other groan’. The bird is oblivious to the pain and death. The nightingale’s song has been heard by himself ‘emperor and clown’ and also by the biblical ‘Ruth’, the beauty, its song has mesmerised and