The Wild Swans at Coole
By W. B. Yeats
Coole Park
Coole Park, in County Galway, was the home of
Lady Augusta Gregory, a playwright and
nationalist whom Yeats met in 1898. They grew
to be close and Yeats spent his summers with
her at Coole Park, a peaceful and beautiful
place, popular with other writers. Yeats used to
enjoy taking quiet walks in the woods within the
large grounds.
Read the Poem….
Can you “sum it up in a nutshell”?
In The Wild Swans at Coole the poet-narrator
has come to the end of another summer there.
It is now autumn and he reflects on how quickly
time passes, and how helpless we are to alter
time's path. The swans - unlike him - appear
unchanging. The passing of time and the change
he sees in himself upsets him.
Have a go at “Crunching the poem”
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Read the poem through
Reduce each line of the poem to one word
Compare the words you have each chosen
Can you spot any lexical fields?
Which words are repeated and what is their
significance?
Use of Repetition….
• Make a list of the words that are repeated in
the poem.
• What is the significance of these words?
• Because of the verse form chosen by Yeats,
the repetition creates a regular and simple
sound, helped by the use of full rhyme. The
short lines slow us down and create an air of
calm.
• Use a venn diagram to collect the words used
to describe: the swans, the setting and the
poet.
The
Setting
The Poet
The Swans
• How is pathetic fallacy used in the poem?
Lyric Poem
• A Lyric poem expresses the feelings of the poet,
or his persona.
• Explore what emotions Yeats is experiencing in
this poem.
• Pick out evidence from which we can infer his
feelings.
• How does the presentation of the swans contrast
with the mood of the poem.
• Considering Freud and pathetic fallacy, what do
the swans appear to symbolise?
Remember Freud?....
• A psychological reading of the poem might use the Freudian
ideas of the Id, Ego and Superego.
• Freud’s concept of the “fractured self” is best illustrated by
concentric circles, with Id in the middle, encircled by Ego and
Superego.
• For Freud, the Id was the animalistic parts of our psyches, our
primal desires and fears;
• the Ego represents the rational aspects of our minds, our ability
to hypothecate and understand the consequences of our
actions;
• the superego represents the internalised rules and customs of
the culture into which we’re born.
• For Freud, Id and Ego are often in conflict with each other.
• What light do these concepts through on your understanding of
the poem?
Anything Familiar from The Celtic Twilight?
1. The geographical setting of the woodland (away from the
modern world)
2. The temporal setting of the in-between time of twilight
3. The figure of the lonely poet lamenting loss
4. The magical, mysterious, symbolic creatures
However, how is the treatment of these aspects different
here than in his earlier poems?
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It is more grounded and less rhetorical.
The meter is looser.
It is more conversational and less hypnotic.
Instead of a noble heroic character from a myth, we have
Yeats himself.