Yeats entertains the thought of living in Miniseries by use of sensual Imagery: “live alone in the bee loud glade. This type of Imagery is further explored In he highly sensual Image: “l hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore”. Yeats appears haunted by this beautiful place as it’s as if the waters are calling him. Perhaps the starkest contrast in this poem is between the deferent colors of each location. The beautiful “purple glow of the pastoral utopia of Miniseries contrasts the “pavements grey” of the dull concrete jungle.
The poem closes with somewhat of an epiphany as it becomes clear to Yeats that he will never actually get to live in this perfect place: “l hear it in the deep hearts core”. It’s what he wants the most but sadly it’s not possible. In “Galling to Byzantium” Yeats Is also faced with an Impossible desire to fulfill. He directly displays his contempt with his advancing age and yearns to conquer his own mortality by escaping the physical world and moving to the idyllic world of Byzantium where he can live forever as art. “That is no country for old men” shows Yeats preoccupation with aging prevents him from enjoying natural life.
HIS disenchantment is directly stated in the line: “an aged man is but a paltry thing” and then further elaborated in the powerfully striking images of a scarecrow (“tattered coat upon a stick”) and a “dying animal”. Yeats discontentment with aging is cleverly expressed In the line: “pepper In a gyred” showing that Yeats wants to unravel his way through time and remain youthful forever. He wishes to travel to the bliss paradise of Byzantium where he can be gathered into “the artifice of eternity”. Yeats firmly states I OFF nature I shall never take my bodily form from any natural thing. This, in my opinion, is a perfect example of the tension between the real world in which he lives and the ideal world that he imagines. Similarly to “Sailing to Byzantium” the poem “The Wild Swans at Cooler” deals with an avidity to overcome the aging process: Yeats greatest desire. The Swans in this poem symbolism eternity as they give the illusion of never aging. The opening line: “The trees are in their autumn beauty’ parallels the age of the speaker and how he feels that he has been ambushed by the process: “The nineteenth autumn has come upon me”.
The line: “and now my heart’s sore” is very telling as it depicts how Yeats is envious; he doesn’t have what the swans appear to have: youthful passion (“unwearied still, lover by lover passion or conquest attend upon them still”. He aments his past and states how he once “trod with a lighter tread”; he must finally accept that “all’s changed”. The mood in this poem is reflective and also wishful that he too could live forever, which is expressed in “Sailing to Byzantium”. “September 1913” unlike the other poems is a political poem.
Here Yeats contrasts the materialistic merchants of the present to the idyllic heroes of “Romantic Ireland”. The tone of this poem is disparaging which is expressed in the opening line with the word: “you”. Yeats immediately attacks the rebels of his time regarding them as reedy merchants who “fumble in a greasy till”. He then goes on the state that they will take everything they can get their greedy hands on until there is nothing left: “add the halfpence to the pence and prayer to shivering prayer until you have dried the marrow from the bone”.
Yeats clearly displays his contempt for these men in the sarcastic and equivocal line: “for men were meant to pray and save. ” The “pray’ in this line can also be interpreted as prey showing Yeats sees these men as nothing but vultures. He regards the men of “Romantic Ireland” as the antithesis of the men f his time: “yet they were of a different kind names that stilled your childish play’. The direct contrast is further explored when he states: “and what God help us could they save they weighed so lightly what they gave”.
He goes on to say that felt he was surrounded by essentially clowns: “lived where motley is worn”. The lack of respect for these leaders is clearly shown as Yeats viewed these men as merely players in the “casual comedy’ of life. Yeats does come to the sudden realization that he was wrong and that “all’s changed, changed utterly’. Yeats becomes very engaged with the notion of the “heart”. While his can change and review events, theirs are “enchanted to a stone”. He ends the
