1. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

2. William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, the eldest son of a painter
William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, the eldest son of a painter . He attended Godolphin School in London and also the high school in Dublin. He studied for three years at the School of Art in Dublin but abandoned art in favour of literature, editing William Blake’s poetry for publication in Yeats became involved in the Irish national movement and helped create the Irish theatre. His play, The Countess Cathleen, was performed in Dublin in Yeats had already published collections of poetry on ancient Irish themes, such as The Celtic Twilight of 1893.

3. Other volumes followed, but Yeats gradually divested himself of his preoccupation with the Romantic past of Ireland and the lush lyricism in which he expressed it. The most significant collection in his thematic and artistic development was the Responsibilities collection of In 1917, Yeats married Georgie Hyde-Lees and he formulated his system of symbolism in A Vision of This influenced several subsequent collections of poems. Yeats served as a senator of the Irish Free State from 1922 to 1928 and received the Nobel Prize for literature in He died in France in 1939.

4. From Romanticism to Modernism: The greatest Irish poet and a monumental figure in 20th c. literature, Yeats presents a series of contradictions, both in his life and in his work. The most important of these is that between his Romanticism and his Modernism. Yeats saw himself as one of the ‘last Romantics’, and there is abundant evidence of the influence of Romanticism in his early life and work. Much of this, for example, is devoted to the celebration of Irish myth and legend, of the supernatural and pastoral worlds. Yeats’ conception of himself was as a bard and a visionary. These subjects and these ideas about his vocation all belong to the 19th c. Romantic view of poetry and the poet. Lyricism dominates Yeats’ early writing.

5. By the accident of the date of his birth, however, Yeats lived into the modern age, which had arrived violently in the First World War, more locally, in the equally turbulent civil war in Ireland in the same years. Yeats realised that he needed to speak of and to this new world, in a different style and with a subject matter relevant to it. He put the Celtic twilight behind him, and the lyrical style he had used to evoke it, and began to write a poetry that confronted contemporary life in more argumentative language. Yet he retained his idea of the poet as a solitary and a visionary, so his later work continues to present the artist as an acutely experiencing being who has a unique ability to perceive and convey the truth.

6. Another contradiction in Yeats’ life and achievement concerns his relationship with Ireland. Although he was often a patriotic poet, he could be scathing in his criticism of his country and countrymen. While he supported Irish independence from Britain, for example, he was appalled by the violence which achieved it and by the unheroic personalities of the revolutionaries. Yeats admired the hierarchical, aristocratic ordering of society in previous ages. He never ceased to yearn for that dignity and ceremoniousness. A further tension in Yeats is that between the active and contemplative lives. On his father’s side, there was a strong tradition of devotion to the arts and spirituality; while in his mother’s family, the heritage was of vigorous action. Yeats admires both approaches and argues, as much in self-persuasion as to convince the reader, for the value of the meditative way in several poems.

7. The Accomplishment of Yeats’ developing style and the extraordinary variety of his voice are without parallel in 20th c. poetry. He is characteristically rhetorical, symbolistic and hieratic. But he can be comic, self-deprecating and earthly, because human life, for Yeats, was a combination of the supernatural and the natural. In exploring and celebrating this contradiction, he writes immoral poetry. Selected Poems: Sailing to Byzantium Among School Children The Second Coming An Irish Airman Foresees His Death Leda and the Swan The Lake Isle Of Innisfree

8. Sailing To Byzantium. I That is no country for old men
Sailing To Byzantium I That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations — at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long (formally praise) Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. II An aged man is but a paltry thing, (of little or no value) A tattered coat upon a stick, unless (badly torn) Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.

9. III O sages standing in God's holy fire. (wise esp
III O sages standing in God's holy fire (wise esp. of old age) As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, (hawk), (circular spiral turn, whirl) And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. (clever trick) IV Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling (metal and glass objects) To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

10. Sailing to Byzantium Summary: The speaker, referring to the country that he has left, says that it is “no country for old men”: it is full of youth and life, with the young lying in one another’s arms, birds singing in the trees, and fish swimming in the waters. There, “all summer long” the world rings with the “sensual music” that makes the young neglect the old, whom the speaker describes as “Monuments of unageing intellect.” An old man, the speaker says, is a “paltry thing,” merely a tattered coat upon a stick, unless his soul can clap its hands and sing; and the only way for the soul to learn how to sing is to study “monuments of its own magnificence.”

11. Summary contd.. Therefore, the speaker has “sailed the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium.” The speaker addresses the sages “standing in God’s holy fire / As in the gold mosaic of a wall,” and asks them to be his soul’s “singing-masters.” He hopes they will consume his heart away, for his heart “knows not what it is”—it is “sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal,” and the speaker wishes to be gathered “Into the artifice of eternity.” The speaker says that once he has been taken out of the natural world, he will no longer take his “bodily form” from any “natural thing,” but rather will fashion himself as a singing bird made of hammered gold, such as Grecian goldsmiths make “To keep a drowsy Emperor awake,” or set upon a tree of gold “to sing / To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Or what is past, or passing, or to come.”

12. Form: The four eight-line stanzas of “Sailing to Byzantium” take a very old verse form: they are metered in iambic pentameter, and rhymed ABABABCC, two trios of alternating rhyme followed by a couplet. Commentary: It is generally agreed that in the collection of poems, The Tower (1928), Yeats’ genius reaches a peak of maturity and accomplishment. “Sailing to Byzantium” is the most famous poem in the collection and perhaps of all Yeats’ poetry. Byzantium which bears the modern name of Istanbul, was the capital of Eastern Christianity for many centuries. It hosted The Platonic Academy until the 15th c. and grew into a famous centre of art. Yeats regards the city as an image of eternity.

13. To him, its monuments enshrine all that is changeless in a world of change. With it he contrasts his own Ireland with its changing life. The description of one city as an image of eternity and another as centre of change is entirely arbitrary, but must be accepted for the understanding of the poem. The real theme of the poem is the question of the permanence of art as against the flux of time and life. It is a poem of escape from the present time and place to an idealised location in the past– ancient Byzantium. To this extent it is a Romantic poem, both in the yearning for an idyllic existence and in the celebration of an exotic world in which to pursue it. It is also Romantic in the high status Yeats gives to artists and poets.

14. In “Sailing to Byzantium” (1926), written when Yeats was sixty-one, he rejects Ireland as “no country for old men” because its inhabitants are caught up in the physical and sexual; the poet seeks instead a land where “unageing intellect” is valued. The second stanza opens with the famous image of the old man as a scarecrow.
Yeats finds the place where the old can find a soul in Byzantium (now Istanbul), the ancient seat of Plato’s Academy and the capital of Eastern Christianity. There he can reject the mortal body, so honored by the youth in Ireland, and find instead immortality in the holy city. He asks the sages of the old city to free his soul from his body, and transport him to an eternal world of art.

15. 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.

16. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand
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?

17. The Second Coming Summary: The speaker describes a nightmarish scene: the falcon, turning in a widening (spiral) “gyre”, cannot hear the falconer; “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”; anarchy is loosed upon the world; “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” The best people, the speaker says, lack all conviction, but the worst “are full of passionate intensity.” The speaker asserts that the world is near a revelation: “Surely the Second Coming is at hand.” No sooner does he think of “the Second Coming,” than he is troubled by “a vast image of the Spiritus Mundi (the collective spirit of mankind): somewhere in the desert, a giant sphinx (“A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun”) is moving, while the shadows of desert birds reel about it. The darkness drops again over the speaker’s sight, but he knows that the sphinx’s twenty centuries of “stony sleep” have been made a nightmare by the motions of “a rocking cradle.” And what “rough beast,” he wonders, “its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

18. Form: The form of the poem is expressive of the content: it is written in a very rough iambic pentameter, but the meter is so loose, and the exceptions so frequent, that it actually seems closer to free verse with frequent heavy stresses. The rhymes are likewise not consistent; apart from the two couplets with which the poem opens. Commentary: ‘The second Coming’ was written in the wake of the First World War, the Irish uprising and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and is one of the most powerful indictments, in poetry, of the modern age. Yeats sees this breaking of nations as anarchy, the repudiation of all authority. The second image of the poem—’the falcon cannot hear the falconer—’ suggests not only the absence of authority, but the violent destructiveness (represented by the uncontrolled falcon) which follows without it.

19. While observing the horror of anarchy, Yeats paradoxically diminishes its significance by calling it ‘mere’– a word that sneers at, both in sense and in sound. It is tumultuous, mean, very loud, and full of confusion. It is full of change and uncertainty and its results are catastrophic: The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; Yeats’ preference for an ordered, ceremonious world or society is clear in the ceremonious phrase, but he does not acquit the rulers and aristocrats from responsibility for these debacles and complete failure: The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. By ‘the best’ he also means the artists and thinkers.

20. Yeats’ view of the destruction of order in Europe was held by many of his contemporaries. For them, the anarchy of the times was apocalyptic, heralding a new age: Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. Here Yeats reflects the Christian teaching that such breaking of nations would signal the end of the world, the Second Coming of Christ and the Last Judgement. However, the Second Coming he envisages is not Christian but heathen and pagan: The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight .. Yeats’ speaker is clearly before us now as a visionary and a prophet– roles which Yeats associates with the poet's calling.

21. His vision is of a troubling world spirit, not benign heavenly being, which is coming to life to bring in a new age. It is in the form of the Egyptian sphinx: …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. There is nothing attractive about this birth, it is gross and sensual, and –most alarmingly– the being is indestructible, as the vultures recognise. Christianity, having replaced the pagan order, must now give a way to its resurrection.

22. The vision is horrifying yet brief– ‘the darkness drops again’– but it ha been a revelation to Yeats: … now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle … The new pagan, anarchic world, he argues is the result of two thousand years of Christian suppression of the pagan. This conforms with Yeats’ view of the waxing and the waning, the rising and the falling of the natural and the supernatural, in individuals and civilisations. Brilliantly, blending the two antithetical world-views, he has the spirit of the sphinx, some indefinable ‘rough beast’, about to begin its epoch, Slouching ‘towards Bethlehem to be born’. The poem moves forward with a frighteningly relentless force as it traces the rising of the beast in the desert and its chillingly gradual but inevitable crawling toward birth at the beginning of a new cycle of human history.

23. The Lake Isle Of Innisfree  I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core Wattle: (poles interwoven with branches) veils of the morning: the soft mist of the morning. Linnet: small brownish songbird. Lapping: sound of water against shores.

24. Innisfree is the name of an island in Ireland and is used in this poem as a symbol of the peace and quietude for which the poet longs. The long and slow lines perfectly express the poet’s weariness of life and his yearning for solitude. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is probably Yeats’ most anthologized poem, it epitomizes the “escape” from the modern industrial world that is now always associated with romanticism’s retreat to a cabin on Walden Pond. Innisfree is kind of paradise of simplicity, peace, and solitude. The speaker is filled with longing and delight in contemplating this haven.

25. Yeats wrote the poem in 1888 when he was living in, and hating, London
Yeats wrote the poem in 1888 when he was living in, and hating, London. He begins with his decision to return to Innisfree, a small, uninhabited island on a lake in western Ireland. There he will build a small cabin and live alone and simply, enjoy the natural world that he idealizes in a few sharp images: the buzz of bees, the “purple glow” of the sky, the evening beating of birds’ wings. He will be self-sufficient, his humble wants supplied by the garden and bee hive. The images harkens back to an earlier time, when buildings were not brick but clay. Like the earlier poets writing in praise of the contemplative life, the speaker seeks peace in his solitary retreat.

26. Only at the end of the poem do we realize the poignancy of his opening line, which declares he “will arise and go now.” The statement, with its demonstrative future tense (I will), is repeated, but we learn that the little cabin and its idealized surroundings exist, and will continue to exist, only in the city dweller’s imagination. He continually hears the sounds of the lake water lapping, but he hears it while standing fixedly on the gray streets of the town. The sounds of the poem recreate the gentle, soothing sounds of wave and wind in contrast to the harsh noises of the city.

27. The last line, which tells us that he hears the water lapping in the world’s heart, reminds the reader of all that the modern industrial city dweller has lost by being separated from the natural pulse of the earth. The lake isle can never be more than a dream, a recollection of a lost Elysium, the garden before the Fall. But perhaps Yeats’ vision is not wholly bleak. His speaker can still hear and respond to the deep forces of nature, immutable under the concrete of the active, busy life. It is the imagination that allows the contemplative mind to reach into the still heart of things and be nourished by it.

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