Butler Yeats

580 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Brief note on yeats symbolism

“When You Are Old” William Butler Yeats Unrequited love is a common theme in poetry. Nature, death, wars, religions are all significant themes but love is the most important. It gives the reader an insight to the author’s inner feelings. “When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats is no exception. Yeats reflects upon his unconditional love for a woman who was not ready for a serious relationship. “When You Are Old” is about Maud Gonne, an Irish nationalist who William Butler Yeats was infatuated with and his unrequited love for her. In the poem, Maud Gonne is reflecting on past loves and relationships. She realizes that Yeats was her only companion who loved her unconditionally. Many loved her, or said they did, but not in every respect like Yeats. Perhaps if her realization were sooner, Yeats would have married her. Many key words jut out, giving us clues to which Yeats is describing. The most significant is “Love” on the tenth line. “Love” is capitalized representing William Yeats himself. Yeats or “Love” fled because he knew it was the best for her. When one loves another unconditionally sacrifices must be made; in this case ending the relationship was the solution. Two other key words are located in the sixth line, “false” and “true”. These words are used to exemplify the love she received from her past relationships. Some men truly loved her while others were artificial with their...

Show More
Related

  • A Clean Well-lighted Place And The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock

    536 Words  | 2 Pages

    When our lives begin, we are innocent and life is beautiful, but as we grow older and time slowly and quickly passes we discover that not everything about life is quite so pleasing. Along with the joys and happiness we experience there is also pain, sadness and loneliness. Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" both tell us about older men who are experiencing these dreadful emotions.

    Read More

  • Sara Teasdale's Life and Accomplishments

    1757 Words  | 4 Pages

    ---. “New Love and Old.” Poem Hunter. Poem Hunter, n. d. Web. 8 March 2014.

    Read More

  • Easter 1916, Wild Swans at Coole and Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    The timeless essence and the ambivalence in Yeats’ poems urge the reader’s response to relevant themes in society today. This enduring power of Yeats’ poetry, influenced by the Mystic and pagan influences is embedded within the textual integrity drawn from poetic techniques and structure when discussing relevant contextual concerns.

    Read More

  • Keats and Longfellow

    706 Words  | 2 Pages

    Time is endlessly flowing by and its unwanted yet pending arrival of death is noted in the two poems “When I Have Fears,” by John Keats and “Mezzo Cammin,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Keats speaks with no energy; only an elegiac tone of euphoric sounds wondering if his life ends early with his never attained fame. He mentions never finding a “fair creature” (9) of his own, only experiencing unrequited love and feeling a deep loss of youth’s passion. Though melancholy, “Mezzo Cammin,” takes a more conversational tone as Longfellow faces what is commonly known as a midlife crisis. The two poems progressions contrast as Keats blames his sorrow for his lack of expression while Longfellow looks at life’s failures as passions never pursued. In spite of this contrast, both finish with similar references to death. The comparable rhyme and rhythm of both poems shows how both men safely followed a practiced path, never straying for any spontaneous chances. The ending tones evoking death ultimately reveal their indications towards it quickly advancing before accomplish...

    Read More

  • W.B. Yeats and History Essay

    1719 Words  | 4 Pages

    New York: Norton, 2000. Ramazani, Jahan. " The Elegiac Love Poems: A Woman Dead and Gon(n)e. " In Yeats's Poetry, Drama, and Prose.

    Read More

  • William Butler Yeats and William Blake

    2712 Words  | 6 Pages

    A study of William Butler Yeats is not complete without a study of William Blake, just as a study of Blake is greatly aided by a study of Yeats. The two poets are inexorably tied together. Yeats, aided by his study of Blake, was able to find a clearer poetic voice. Yeats had a respect for and an understanding of Blake's work that was in Yeats' time without parallel. Yeats first read Blake at the age of 15 or 16 when his father gave him Blake to read. Yeats writes in his essay "William Blake and the Imagination" that "...when one reads Blake, it is as though the spray of an inexhaustible fountain of beauty was blown into our faces (Yeats, Essays xxx)." Yeats believed Blake to be a genius and he never wavered in his opinion. It is his respect for Blake that caused him to study and emulate Blake. He tried to tie Blake closer to himself by stressing Blake's rumored Irish ancestry. He strove to understand Blake more clearly than anyone had before him, and he succeeded. As with other pursuits Yeats held nothing back. He immersed himself fully in Blake's writings. As with many of his mental pursuits he deepened his understanding of the subject by writing about it.

    Read More

  • William Butler Yeats Research Paper

    1954 Words  | 4 Pages

    His first poems about romance mentioned grey hair and exhaustion even if he wrote them while still young, and they still portray his consciousness about old age (Hoffman 29). In his 60s, Yeats began to get sickly. Regardless of his deteriorated health, he spent the last fifteen years of his life as a lively man who had an extraordinary appetite for life. He still wrote plays about spiritualism. One time after a recovery from a severe sickness, he created a sequence of dynamic poetries that recounted about an old poor fictitious female called Silly Jane as an expression of happiness. The passion for poetry kept Yeats active in his career and was determined to ensure that sickness did not hinder his

    Read More

  • William Butler Yeats

    1678 Words  | 4 Pages

    William Butler Yeats was born on June thirteenth, eighteen sixty-five, at ten-forty pm, in Sandymount, Dublin (Foster, 13). He grew up lanky, untidy, slightly myopic, and extremely thin. He had black hair, high cheek bones, olive skin, and slanting eyes (Foster, 34). It was presumed he was Tubercular. As a child he was ridiculed, mainly because of his Irish heritage (Foster, 16). He accomplished many things in his life time.

    Read More

  • Comparing the Themes of Love in Lord Byron's “She Walks in Beauty” and Keats' Poem, “La Belle Dame sans Merci”

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    While Lord Byron's poem enhances the beauty of love, Keats' does the opposite by showing the detriments of love. In “She Walks in Beauty,” the speaker asides about a beautiful angel with “a heart whose love is innocent” (3, 6). The first two lines in the first stanza portray a defining image:

    Read More

  • Use of Dramatic Contrast in Yeats' Poetry

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    This refrain enforces his disgust at the type of money hungry people that the Irish have become. In the third and fourth stanza, however, Yeats completely changes the tone of his poetry. He praises the romantics of Irish history, such as Rob...

    Read More

  • An Analysis of the Symbols in Yeat’s Poems

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first text entitled, “When you are Old” by William Yeats has the main message of his lover leaving him, but uses the symbolism of a book. The main message of this poem is William Yeats had a lover who loved Yeats has much as he loved her; the only problem was the woman Yeats loved was a “rebellious” women’s rights activist. She thought that if she were to marry, it would look bad on her for being controlled by a man, and trying to push for women’s rights. Yeats publishes a book of poetry, giving her one of his first copies. In this Yeats hopes that one day when she is old she will, “by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look” (Yeats, When you are Old, page 1140, lines 2-3) and then he hopes she regrets not marrying him. The book of poetry that he publishes is a representation, a symbol, of future regret for his ...

    Read More

  • Comparison of William Butler Yeats Poems The Lake Isle of Innestree, The Wild Swans at Cole, and Sailing to Byzantium

    536 Words  | 2 Pages

    Author of poetry, William Butler Yeats, wrote during the twentieth century which was a time of change. It was marked by world wars, revolutions, technological innovations, and also a mass media explosion. Throughout Yeats poems he indirectly sends a message to his readers through the symbolism of certain objects. In the poems The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The wild Swans at Cole, and Sailing to Byzantium, all by William Yeats expresses his emotional impact of his word choices and symbolic images.

    Read More

  • Yeats’ Symbolism

    911 Words  | 2 Pages

    To begin, Yeats uses the universal symbol of the night sky to symbolize unimportance and anonymity in his poem When You Are Old. This poem is about Yeats personal life. The whole point of this three stanza short poem is to make the girl he loved when he was young remember him when she grew older. Starting in line 1 and skipping to line 2, he says, “When you are old. . . And nodding by the fire, take down this book.” He put this poem in a book for her and her alone, as a profession of his love for her that cannot die. The symbol itself, however, is not a personal one but more a universal relator. In the last line of the poem, referring to her view of him and all of the other young men in her life, he says he “hid his face amid a crowd o...

    Read More

  • Analysis of William Butler Yeats' Poems

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    To begin, When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats discusses the idea of change in life. In this poem Yeats is a bitter man angry about the way his woman would not marry him. He goes to say some harsh things in a lovey way and tends to get his point across. His poem begins by saying on page 1140 lines 1-2, “When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book,” Here Yeats disc...

    Read More

  • Ireland and Irish Nationalism in the Poetry of William Butler Yeats

    1790 Words  | 4 Pages

    Finneran, Richard J. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. 2nd ed. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1996.

    Read More

More about Butler Yeats

Open Document