Yeats: The Wild Swans at Coole

Ø  In 1867, the family moved to England from Ireland

Ø  In December 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation”.

Ø  He was a Symbolist poet

Ø  Yeats moved to France and died there in 1939.

·       First published in the June 1917 issue of the Little Review, and became the title poem in the Yeats’s 1917 and 1919 collections The Wild Swans at Coole.

·       It was written during a period when Yeats was staying with his friend Lady Gregory at her home at Coole Park,

·       The collection was dedicated to her son, Major Robert Gregory (1881–1918), a British airman lost during a friendly fire incident in World War I.

·       Literary scholar Daniel Tobin writes that Yeats was melancholy and unhappy, reflecting on his advancing age, romantic rejections by both Maud Gonne and her daughter Iseult Gonne, and the ongoing Irish rebellion against the British.

·       Tobin reflects that the poem is about the poet’s search for a lasting beauty in a changing world where beauty is mortal and temporary.

·       He also wrote “Coole Park, 1929”, a poem that describes the park as a symbol for the revival of Irish literature.

·       Yeats’s home at Thoor Ballylee was just 3 miles away

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 rhyme scheme is a-b-c-b-d-d in every stanza.

There is a mixture of iambic pentameter, iambic trimeter and iambic tetrameter in the poem.

The poem has the structure of a lyrical song or even a ballad.

Ans: In the poem “The Wild Swans at Coole,” Yeats presents a somber beauty of the autumnal landscape. The trees are leafless and the paths across the wood are dry. Cole Lake is full of water to the brim. As there is no wind, its surface is so calm that the clear sky is reflected on it.

·     How many swans were there on the Shore of Coole Lake?

·     The woodland paths are dry

Ans: This may symbolically suggest the dryness of the age that has come upon the poet.

·     “Under the October twilight the water/ Mirrors a still sky”. What is the function of the ‘mirror’?

Ans: The word ‘mirror’ here may refer to the recollections of the past on the visit to a known landscape, a poetic strategy developed by Coleridge and used by Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey.

·     “Are nine and fifty swans.”

Ans: Overtones of nursery rhymes to be marked. It seems to bear a somewhat mythic significance, due not only to the specificity of the number but also to the archaic manner in which it is expressed. It might be just a rhyming or matching word with 19. The odd swan (from 29 pairs+1) may represent the poet himself standing alone. Puhvel recalls that fifty-nine is the number of bells said to be on the horse of the Queen of Elfland in the Scottish ballad “Thomas Rhymer”; he therefore sees the poem as a static contrast between the “fairy immortality and immutability” of the swans and the strictly linear nature of the aging poet’s life. Finally, we can say that it is a mystic number or even a mythic number and has nothing to do with the real situation of the poet.

·     “I have looked upon those …tread”. Why does the poet say that “now my heart is sore”?

Ans: Nineteen years ago, when the poet first visited the lake one day at a twilight of autumn, he saw the swans fly through the air in small circles, lover by lover. When they flew away above his head joyously, the whole air was filled with the music of their wings. All this made him happy and content. But now he has grown old in body and soul. He feels bitter and sad at the fact that he can no longer enjoy the sight as he did in his youth.

·     “Their hearts have not grown old….” Why does the poet say so?

Ans: Standing on the shore of the Coole Lake after a gap of nineteen years, the poet feels that, unlike himself, the swans have not grown old in body and spirit. Full of youthful vigour they can enjoy paddling through the cold water and winning the hearts of their beloved and mating with them.

·     ‘And now my heart is sore’–

After describing his watching of the ‘brilliant creatures’, he admits his envious state of mind. He often implicitly indicates his regret at not being able to consummate his relationship with Maud, but this is the first time he explicitly declares the emotional connection he has with her, something which is starting to cause him physical pain. It is the only point at which the poet expresses his sadness unambiguously. Elsewhere, it is implied by metaphor and allusion.

·     Why does the poet call the swans “mysterious creatures”?

Ans: As darkness looms large over the surface of the Coole Lake, it seems to the poet that the swans, as if, belong to a different world, different from the humans, a world not marked by mutability.

·     ‘when I awake some day / to find they have flown away?

Ans: The swans in his poetry are a constant metaphor for Maud. Maud is his muse, and when she eventually dies, he is unsure what he will do. At the moment, he is dedicating his poetry and ultimately his life to Maud and therefore is worried about what the future will hold for him once she is gone.

A.     Metaphor: idea of treading for facing or coping with the emotions of life.

2.     “And now my heart is sore”. ‘Sore’ is

A.      A caesura here

3.     “And now my heart is sore”. “heart’ is

A.     Synecdoche: Part of his body, represents him as a whole human being and his pain.

4.     “All’s changed…’ What can be the autobiographical reference here?

A.     Yeats’ opinion on the question of Irish nationalism had changed

5.     “bell-beat” is

A.     Metaphor: For passing of time or death.

6.     The ‘bell’ in ‘bell-beat’ is grammatically a

A.     Noun-modifier in which a noun is used as an adjective.

7.     Biologically swans are

A.     Monogamous

8.     “Attend upon them still”. What is the meaning of ‘attend’ here?

A.     Used in its archaic French meaning here: “wait for.”

9.     What is the impact of the word ‘still’ here?

A.     The image of stillness conveys a sense of a moment captured by the poet [like still pictures]

10.   “Mysterious, beautiful”. Figure of speech

A.     Hendiadys

11.     “Among what rushes will they build”. Do you find any autobiographical parallel here?

A.     It may refer to the poet’s search for his home and desire for a family.

12.    What does the repetition of plosive letters convey in the poem?

A.     His own frustration with life [‘clamorous’, ‘paddle’, ‘beat’ and ‘scatter’]

13.    Name a poem in which Yeats worked on the sexual imagery of the swan?

A.     ‘Leda and the Swan’

14.   ‘…heart is sore’. Can you select the poem that treats a similar theme of loss and bitterness?

A.     ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’

15.    “They have flown away.” What is the variation here?

A.     Anapaest

16.   “…still sky.” What is the literary device here?

A.     Sibilance is a literary device where strongly stressed consonants are created deliberately by producing air from vocal tracts through the use of lips and tongue.

17.    “They paddle in the cold”. ‘Cold’ is an

A.     Enjambment

18.   “But now they drift on the still water,/Mysterious, beautiful” What does this image convey

A.    A sense of mystery

B.     A sense of permanence

C.     Oneness with nature

19.   “Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day/To find they have flown away?” What is the final vision here?

A.    Sense of loss

B.     Sense of illusion with permanence

C.    Artistic permanence

D.    Humanistic in the sense that the poet transcends the personal and links it to the aesthetic pleasure of humanity in general and thus also crosses the limit of time