Analysis Of The Poem Wild Swans At Coole - 1004 Words

Yeats’ ongoing struggles and his search for truth are evident in the increasingly complex form of his poetry which challenges existing perspectives on mortality as well as philosophy on beauty and art in order to find new ways of perceiving the world. In ‘Wild Swans at Coole’ (1919), Yeats urges his readers to discover the inevitability of mortality through the guidance of his personal questioning; transience of natural beauty and art also encompasses an aspect of his search for truth. ‘Among School Children’ (1928) is a continuation of Yeats’ searching process as he encourages further insights by revealing acceptance of mortality and beauty of unity through sophisticated, modernist manipulation of poetic features. In WSAC, Yeats forces†¦show more content†¦In the last stanza, the composer expresses his sense of loss and uncertainty through the metaphor of the swans having ‘flown away’ from him. The swans symbolising vitality and life, flew away from the persona, reflecting uncertainties of loss. Symbolism is an experimental, modernist technique in poetry at the time. Through symbolism, Yeats encourages more varied interpretations of his message, thus expecting his readers to develop individual perspectives of the reality. Hence, beyond representing persona’s vanishing fertility, the departure of the swans may also denote the losses experienced by the world, yielding to the controversial time of the poem’s creation. In ASC, Yeats accepts human impermanence and expresses his resolution to face mortality with a calmness of heart while continuing to question the world through manipulation of poetic form. The poem opens with the persona ‘walk(ing) through the school room questioning’. On a literal sense, the persona is inspecting a school but metaphorically, the school rooms represent Yeats’ stages of life: walking though the individual class rooms symbolises the process of stepping across time and space. The opening ambiguity of the poem immediately conjures questioning, aligning readers’ search for meaning with Yeats’ state of contemplation. Contrasting to the opening of WSAC, instead of agonising about passing of time, Yeats