The Wild Swans at Coole
The Wild Swans at Coole William buttler yeats’ poem, “the wild swans at coole” at first glance is a just melancholy slightly reminiscent look back into the speaker’s past enjoyment of watching “nine-and-fifty swans” out on a majestic lake he visits annually, but when you look more closely and analyze the poem closely you find that the speaker is actually talking about himself and what he has learned and what has change through the nine-teen autumns he has spent watching the beautiful swans.
Yeats begins his poem saying “The trees are in their autumn beauty” starting the poem talking about the beauty and simplicity of the small everyday things in nature, setting the stage of beauty and simplicity of nature that is recurrent throughout the poem. Yeats seems to be jealous of the swan’s beauties who are “Unwearied still, lover by lover,” it seems that the speaker may have been wearied himself by life or a lost lover.
The writer speaks of “nine-and-fifty swans” which is not an even number which hints toward the lone swan’s loneliness which is implied to be the Yeats, all alone with no one to “paddle in the cold” with around lake Coole. “Passion or conquest, wander where they will” again in the third stanza Yeats speaks again with envy of the beautiful swans doing what they will, going where they feel, always with one another because swans mate for life.
In the end the speaker talks of how the swans leaving him in sadness will only bring happiness to others who stare upon them with awe, “Delight men’s eyes when I awake someday to find they have flown away.” The last stanza repeats the theme of the writer’s insignificance and that nature is continual with or without him he is nothing.
Yeats begins his poem saying “The trees are in their autumn beauty” starting the poem talking about the beauty and simplicity of the small everyday things in nature, setting the stage of beauty and simplicity of nature that is recurrent throughout the poem. Yeats seems to be jealous of the swan’s beauties who are “Unwearied still, lover by lover,” it seems that the speaker may have been wearied himself by life or a lost lover.
The writer speaks of “nine-and-fifty swans” which is not an even number which hints toward the lone swan’s loneliness which is implied to be the Yeats, all alone with no one to “paddle in the cold” with around lake Coole. “Passion or conquest, wander where they will” again in the third stanza Yeats speaks again with envy of the beautiful swans doing what they will, going where they feel, always with one another because swans mate for life.
In the end the speaker talks of how the swans leaving him in sadness will only bring happiness to others who stare upon them with awe, “Delight men’s eyes when I awake someday to find they have flown away.” The last stanza repeats the theme of the writer’s insignificance and that nature is continual with or without him he is nothing.