W.B Yeats Great War Poets Symbolism - 2893 Words

Discuss the use of symbols and correspondences in the set writers on the module. William Butler Yeats was considered to be one of the most important symbolists of the 20th Century. Believed to have been influenced by the French symbolist movement of the 19th Century, his poems incorporated symbols as a means of representing mystical, dream-like and abstract ideals. This was especially prevalent towards the latter part of his life when, inspired by his wife Georgiana Hyde-Lees, he developed a symbolic system which theorized movements through major cycles of history in his book A Vision (1925, 1937)[1]. â€Å"The Wild Swans at Coole† and â€Å"The Second Coming† are poems of Yeats’ which incorporate symbols, and will be discussed in this essay.†¦show more content†¦The sphinx is spotted â€Å"somewhere in the sands of the desert†[9]. The desert is symbolic of the temptation of Christ during his forty days and forty nights fasting by the devil. Therefore the sphinx can be associated with the devil in heralding the second coming o f Christ. The city of Bethlehem mentioned in the last line of the poem is symbolic of the entering into the world of powerful and Godly forces, Christ being one of purity. However, the â€Å"rough beast†[10] which moves its â€Å"slow thighs†[11] and â€Å"slouches† towards Bethlehem to bring a reign of terror as its â€Å"hour come round at last† symbolises anything but purity. Symbolism is also a strong element in Yeats’ poem â€Å"Wild Swans at Coole†. This is most obviously seen through the actual swans in the poem. In the poem, it has been nineteen years (â€Å"the nineteenth autumn has come upon me†[12]) since Yeats has visited the park and seen the swans. He admits that his â€Å"heart is sore†[13] upon seeing the â€Å"brilliant creatures†[14], alluding to the fact that time has passed by, and he has changed, whereas these â€Å"mysterious†[15] swans have not. Their â€Å"hearts have not grown old†[ 16], and they still â€Å"paddle† beside each other, â€Å"lover by lover†, doing what they please, transcending time itself to swim down the â€Å"companionable streams or climb the air†.[17]Show MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Second Coming By W. B. Yeats1190 Words   |  5 PagesWilliam Butler Yeats was a great Irish poet of the twentieth century. During his lifespan World War I occurred, along with its resulting political upheaval. He also lived in the century before the change of the millennium, a theme touched upon in his poems. He, like many other authors, incorporated the events that occurred during his life into his work. This important factor of the time period is clearly reflected in his work, â€Å"The Second Coming.† The critical consensus regarding the poem â€Å"The SecondRead MoreEssay on Wilfred Owens Dulce Et Decorum Est1499 Words   |  6 PagesWilfred Owens Dulce Et Decorum Est Through poems with blazing guns, spurting blood, and screaming agony, Wilfred Owen justly deserves the label, applied by critics, of war poet. Some critics, like W.B. Yeats who said, â€Å"I consider [Wilfred Owen] unworthy of the poets corner of a country news paper,† (362) satisfy themselves with this label and argue Owen lacked the artistic merit to be given much attention beyond it. However, many other Owen critics like David Daiches interest themselves inRead More W.B. Yeats Poetry Essay2306 Words   |  10 PagesW.B. Yeats Poetry Many literary critics have observed that over the course of W. B. Yeats’ poetic career, readers can perceive a distinct change in the style of his writing. Most notably, he appears to adopt a far more cynical tone in the poems he generated in the later half of his life than in his earlier pastoral works. This somewhat depressing trend is often attributed to the fact that he is simply becoming more conservative and pessimistic in his declining years, but in truth it representsRead MorePoems with Theme with Life and Death and Their Analysis8446 Words   |  34 Pages Different opinions of different poets on life and death found in their poems are also presented and contrasted in this paper. This paper will be of use and help to the learners of English. Introduction: To many, Death creates uncertainty and fear. It seems we shall never meet again. But the poets remind us of the essential truths of life, death and immortality. In her poem Turn again to Life, the poet Mary Lee Hall, says â€Å"If death is a chapter in a bookRead MoreModernist Elements in the Hollow Men7051 Words   |  29 Pagesfit the modern man as described by Fitzgerald, Faulkner and others of the poet’s contemporaries. It is marked by its tendency to bring together the intellectual, the aesthetic and the emotional in a way that both condemns the past and honors it. The poet expressed modernism as a new system of thought that does not fully deny traditionality by using devices such as allusions to previous texts. In â€Å"The Tradition and the Individual Talent†, Eliot emphasizes the role of literary tradition viewing the best