William Butler Yeats’ The Magi Essay

After a four week survey of a multitude of children’s book authors and illustrators, and learning to analyze their works and the methods used to make them effective literary pieces for children, it is certainly appropriate to apply these new skills to evaluate a single author’s works. Specifically, this paper focuses on the life and works of Ezra Jack Keats, a writer and illustrator of books for children who single handedly expanded the point of view of the genre to include the experiences of multicultural children with his Caldecott Award winning book “Snowy Day.” The creation of Peter as a character is ground breaking in and of itself, but after reading the text the reader is driven to wonder why “Peter” was created. Was he a vehicle for

Yeats Irish Identity shaped poetry, mythology and history, other Irish writers, folktales, Irish Theatre. Many people say that William Butler Yeats was the greatest poem writer from the 20th century but to him he was just an ordinary person that had a love for writing poems. William Butler Yeats was born on 13 June 1865 in County Dublin, Ireland to John Butler Yeats, a lawyer turned portrait painter and Susan Mary Pollexfen, daughter of a wealthy family from county Sligo Yeats's mother shared with her son her interests in folklore, fairies, and astrology as well as her love of Ireland, particularly the region surrounding Sligo in western Ireland where Yeats spent much of his childhood. He had a brother named Jack and two sisters, namely, Elizabeth

In the first stanza Yeats expresses his conflicting loathing and admiration for modernity through the juxtaposition of “vivid faces” and “grey houses”. This represents the possibilities that modernity can bring; the revitalising of the community or the destruction of tradition and age old energy already lost by the modifications in the city. The repetition of the phrase “A terrible beauty is born” in the first and fourth stanzas articulate this inner turmoil revolving around modernity. This oxymoronic declaration is emphasised throughout the text by Yeats’ confusion towards the rebellion and its necessity. The fourth stanza embodies this conflict, removing the previously represented idea that life in pre-rebellion Ireland was a “casual comedy”, alluding to an Elizabethan play where the characters were content. By asking the rhetoric questions “was it needless death” and “O when may [British rule] suffice?” Yeats parallels the unresolved contradiction of “terrible beauty”. However, this sensitive treatment of conflict allows the retainment of ambiguity and can be related to any change within life, hence allowing audiences to superimpose their own beliefs and ideas into the poem. Yeats continues to explore his aversion towards modernism in The Second Coming with the appointment of a new “gyre” standing as the symbol for a new age. The fear of

The poem begins in a manner suggestive of a lover scorned. Yeats talks about how passionate women, which at this point in time is not necessarily a compliment, don’t consider love that is a sure thing worth their time and energy. Essentially it is a poetized version of the “Nice guys finish last” argument, along with the idea that people only desire what

What light does this comment of Yeats’ shed on his poetry? Feel free in your answer to concentrate on poetic devices other than rhythm if you prefer.

The fourteen-line, sonnet poem breaks into four obvious parts. Lines 1-4 are an exaggerated list of the reasons that Keats is afraid of dying young. In lines 5-6, Keats takes the time to “behold, upon the night's starr'd face” (V) the “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” (VI). This point in the poem is light-hearted and reveals to the reader that Keats thinks on a different level than most humans. Lines 7-11 bring the reader back to the depressing list of reasons that Keats is so afraid of dying young. The turning point of the poem is in line 12. From line 1-11 Keats focuses almost completely on his own fears, but starting in line 12, he turns to the “wide world” (XIII), which is the key to all romantic

Yeats was a confessional poet - that is to say, that he wrote his poetry directly from his own experiences. He was an idealist, with a purpose. This was to create Art for his own people - the Irish. But in so doing, he experienced considerable frustration and disillusionment. The tension between this ideal, and the reality is the basis of much of his writing. One central theme of his earlier poetry is the contrast

Describing what, for Christians, should be glorious and beautiful, he states “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” (4). Mere--as if anarchy is not such a big deal. Like Blast, Yeats has a strong sense of irony, though he uses it a bit more subtly than Blast did. “The best lack all conviction” (7), showing that “the best”--those that tried to follow the rules that Jesus had laid down--now have no idea where to turn since their law was taken from them. “The ceremony of innocence is drowned” (6) after all, as no one truly is as innocent as they might pretend to be, and ceremonies are a simple facade--a ritual done out of tradition and politeness, which the modernists

The Apocalypse on earth has started and The Anti-Christ a beast of half-human, a half animal is rising, and the world is being pulled into the darkness of hell through the gyre. This is what the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Keats is about. Even though “The Second Coming” is about Revolutions, to the reader Keats was left looking at the events of the world around him and trying to take in all the violent acts of war and left with the devastation. Keats uses the narrator, the language and symbolism, to his form of writing, to dramatic irony through the poem of “The Second Coming” to show Keats left struggling to understand religion from these events, to his life, to his upbringing.

     When You are Old, by William Butler Yeats, represents and elderly woman reminiscing of her younger days. A past lover whispers to her as she looks through a photo album. Basically, Yeats is showing that as the woman gets older, she is alone, but she does not have to be lonely. She will always have her memories for companionship.

The tool of Yeats' prophecy, crystallized in the "widening gyre" traced by the falcon, is a concept Yeats detailed

The poem begins with two lines which are repeated throughout the poem which convey what the narrator is thinking, they represent the voice in

Mr. Yeats relates his vision, either real or imagined, concerning prophesies of the days of the Second coming. The writer uses the Holy Bible scripture text for his guide for because no one could explain this period of time without referring to the Holy Bible. He has chosen to present it in the form of a poem, somewhat like the quatrains of Nostradamus. The poem does not cover all the details of this event, but does give the beginning of the powerful messages, and a dark look at those ominous days surrounding the Second Coming of The Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps he is trying in his own words to warn everyone about the end time days.

Yeats purposely allows for interpretation throughout the poem especially within the last stanza. In the first three stanzas the world of the faeries is portrayed as wild and free while the world of the child

The fifth stanza describes the quality that Yeats came to see as at the very heart of civilized life: courtesy. By courtesy he understands a means of being in the world that would protect the best of human dignity, art and emotion. And in his prayer for his daughter he wishes that she will learn to survive with grace and dignity in a world turned horrific. He explains that many men have hopelessly loved beautiful women, and they thought that the women loved them as well but they did not.