W.B. YEATS
1865-1939
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
►“William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist and
one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar
of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later
years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms.”
►“In 1923, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for
what the Nobel Committee described as ‘inspired poetry, which
in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole
nation’; and he was the first Irishman so honoured.”
►He maintained a life-long interest in mysticism, symbols and
Irish mythology.
►Yeats was saddened and immensely moved by the tragedy of
the Great War and the Irish Civil War.
SOURCE: <www.wikipedia.org> accessed on 30/06/09
HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
WORLD WAR 1 (1914-1918)
►“… was a global military conflict that involved most of the world's
great powers assembled in two opposing alliances: the Entente and the
Central Powers….Over 70 million military personnel were mobilized in
one of the largest wars in history.”
►In excess of 15 million people were killed, making it one of the
deadliest conflicts in history.
►The enormous death and destruction caused by this war immensely
affected Yeats.
SOURCE: <www.wikipedia.org> accessed on 30/06/09
HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
IRISH CIVIL WAR (1922-1923)
►This was a conflict in Ireland in 19221923, about the nature of the new Irish
Republic
►The conflict was waged between two
opposing groups of Irish nationalists: the
forces of the new Free State, who
supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty under
which the state was established, and the
Republican opposition, for whom the
Treaty represented a betrayal of the
Irish Republic.
►The war was won by the Free State
forces.
SOURCE: <www.wikipedia.org> accessed on 30/06/09
HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
IRISH CIVIL WAR (1922-1923)
►It was an extremely violent conflict that cost close to 4000 lives. A
huge toll for the small Irish nation.
►Yeats was a passionate supporter of a free Ireland, but was
saddened by the violence.
An explosion near
Trinity College in
Dublin.
SOURCE: <www.wikipedia.org> accessed on 30/06/09
THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
READING YEATS’S POETRY
ACTIVITY
1. Read “The Wild Swans at Coole” and “The Second
Coming” by Yeats, and critically annotate each
poem using the 10 Step Grid to help you.
2. What symbol(s) dominate each poem? Explain in
your own words how Yeats uses these symbols to
convey ideas.
3. What ideas and techniques are shared between
the two poems?