The Wild Swans at Coole
W.B. Yeats
Written 1916.
Published in ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ (1917)
Ballad like lament for a lost Ireland.
Existential lyric of love
and loss.
Simple lyric of romantic yearning.
Mannered, magical lyric on a
disappearing world.
Pastoral poem searching for
a mythical peace.
Q. Which poems do these lines best summarise? What can we see by way of
connection between these descriptions?
The Wild Swans at Coole (1916)
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.
5
10
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?
15
20
25
30
The poem is set in Coole (Cuil) Park,
Co. Galway (Gaillimh), home of Lady
Gregory who was a patron and
friend of Yeats.
(See notes on September 1913)
Yeats was 51 when he wrote this
poem. He had first met Maud Gonne
in 1889 (aged 24) and proposed to her
in 1891, 1894, 1899, 1900, 1901,
1908, asking her for the last time in
1916.
He first visited Coole Park in 1897
(aged 32), having began a year long
affair with Mrs Olivia Shakespear in
1896. He eventually married, in 1917,
Georgie Hyde-Lees who was 26 but
only after being rejected by Iseult
Gonne (Maud’s daughter!) earlier that
year who was 23 at the time.
Yeats’s Women
Georgie Hyde-Lees
Olivia Shakespear
Maud Gonne
He said of his relationship with Gonne that
he was ‘involved in a miserable love affair
that had, but for one brief interruption,
absorbed my thoughts for years past and
would for some years yet.’
Q. Who do you think this poem is about?
Maud Gonne? Or Iseult? Olivia
Shakespear? Or Georgie?
Iseult Gonne
The Wild Swans at Coole (1912)
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.
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?
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.
5
10
25
30
15
20
Q. This was the original
arrangement of the
stanzas. How does this
change the tone of the
poem? How does it
change the meaning?
‘My soul is an enchanted boat
Which, like the swan, doth float.’
‘His most classically perfect love poem.’
(Greening 2005)
PB Shelley ‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) II.V. lines 72-73
‘At the end of the poem is he dreaming now or still asleep? Is he
reliving his dream of poetic fulfilment with hope? Or despair at his loss
of creativity? Or fear of death?’ (Greening 2005)
The swans are quietly made into symbols of permanence,
feeling, inspiration, ready to delight other men’s eyes
when they have deserted Yeats. The desertion is
imagined but feared upon awakening from his sleep, his
reverie, his obsession.’
‘Yeats’s syntax here is plain,
but not colloquial, like a
formal conversation…’
Richard Ellmann ‘Yeats: The Man and the Mask’ (1985)
‘I would that, we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea;
We tire of the flame and meteor, before it can fade and flee;’
WB Yeats ‘The White Birds’ (1893)
Q. Write a short paragraph explaining how each of these quotes relate or help
contextualise your understanding of the poem ‘The Wild Swans at Coole.’