William Butler Yeats' Life and Poetry

Yeats's Life and 5 Periods of His Poetic Career

Interpretation:

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

"When You Are Old"

"Adam's Curse"

"The Second Coming"

"Sailing to Byzantium"

"Leda and the Swan"

References

Yeats's Life and 5 Periods of His Poetic Career

William Butler Yeats is the greatest 20th century poet of the English language. He was born on June 13, 1865 in Sandymount, Ireland. In 1889, he met his great love, Maud Gonne, and actress and Irish revolutionary who became a major landmark in the poet's life and imagination. Later in 1891, he became one of the founders of the Rhymers' Club, whose members included Lionel Johnson, Ernest Dowson, and many other characteristic figures of the 1890s. Yeats had also met Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, with whom he founded the Irish Literary Theatre, the later Abbey Theatre. In 1923, Yeats received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died on January 28, 1939 in Cap Martin, France.
Yeats's poetic career could be divided into 5 distinguished periods. In his first period, around the 1890s, his works had influences of London, Sligo, and Dublin, where he spent his childhood and young manhood. In London, he acquired Pre-Raphaelite ideas of poetry: a poet's language should be dreamy, evocative and ethereal; in Sligo, he got a knowledge of the life of the peasantry and of their folklore from the countryside around Sligo; in Dublin, he was influenced by the currents of Irish nationalism and learned to see his poetry as a contribution to a rejuvenated Irish culture. His early works such as "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "When You Are Old" are of this period.
Around 1900s, Yeats gradually abandoned "impersonal beauty" and desired to "carry the normal, passionate, reasoning self" into his poetry. In "Adam's Curse" we can see how he combined the colloquial with the formal and used a suggestive, beautiful lyricism. "This is the characteristic of his second period." In Yeats's third period (around 1910s), he added a "metaphysical" as well as an epigrammatic element into his poetry, and there was a spare and tragic bitterness marked in his poems. The representative poems of this period are A Vision and "The Second Coming." 
The fourth period, also the mature Yeats at his very best, was characterized by a realistic-symbolic-Metaphysical element with an uncanny power over words. During this period, important imagery such as "winding stairs," "spinning tops," "gyres," and "spirals of all kinds" appeared in his poetry; those imagery were in accordance to his philosophy of a historical moment consisted of 2000 years. "The Tower" and "Leda and the Swan" are representatives of this period. In the last years before Yeats's death, he returned to the turbulence, and his last poems have a controlled yet startling wildness. This change could be found in his second poem on Byzantium.

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Interpretation

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

There are two main themes in 'The lake Isle of Innisfree.' First, the speaker longs to lead a peaceful, tranquil life. Second, it is a soul-searching poem. Yeats uses 10 lines for Idyllic fantasy, 2 for reality. Besides, he uses various color, different sound image and shifting time to picture his idyllic fantasy. At last, he moves back to the dull reality.
The change of color serves as vividness. Readers can imagine the green color for bean-rows, yellow color for clay, golden color for glimmer, purple color for purple glow, and red color for linnet. There are different sound image. First, it comes the natural sound--cricket sings, (honey bee) bee-loud, water lapping. Eventually, it comes the voice from himself. The speaker intends to listen to himself. The shifting time also acts as activity. The scheme of time shifts from morning to midnight, and then go back to noon and evening. The shifting time shows the speaker's subtle observation, and it enriches the natural life.
There are several features in the form of 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree.' It contains a loose iambic pattern. The form of The Lake Isle of Innisfree is combined with three hexameters & one tetrameter. Readers can find the regular end rhyme-ABAB and alliteration such as Nine, I, hive in line three.

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"When You Are Old"

The speaker suggests to the woman he loves that when she is old she will fully appreciate that he was the one of her many admirers who love her for her "pilgrim soul" and her sorrows.
In stanza 1, the poet bids the woman he loves to read this poem when she is old and so remembers the beauty she once had.
In stanza 2, the poet points out that although many men loved the woman for her "glad grace" and "beauty," the poet loved her for her "pilgrim soul."
According to stanza 3, remembering these things, she may be sad that his love for her "fled."

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"Adam's Curse"

The speaker remembers sitting with his beautiful, mild woman, at the end of summer, discussing poetry. The discussion of work and beauty is divided into three progressive parts: the speaker's claims about poetry in the first stanza, the friend's claims about physical beauty, and the speaker's claims about love. What they talk about are worthwhile achievements that require human labouring to accomplish the goals. For example, poetry spends the speaker "A line will take us hours maybe" (line 4). Then, the physical beauty, though they don't talk about this kind of topics in the school, it will cost women a lot of time to make up or model their shapes. "Although they do not talk of it at school---/ That we must labour to be beautiful." (lines 19, 20) The last one is love. We should not only cultivate but also treasure our love. 
Adam's Curse is written in heroic couplets, which is a name used to describe rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. Some of they rhymes are full (years / ears), but some of them are only partial (clergymen / thereupon). 
Generally, when we think about moon, it may show us a pure and white picture. However, in this poem, the moon is dim and pale. "A moon, worn as if it had been a shell/ Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell/ About the stars and broke in days and years." (lines 31-33) In the beginning, they have some dialogue. "I said: '…'" (lines 4, 21). Nevertheless, when speaking of love, they become quiet. He feels sad because the woman rejects his love. We may speculate that she is Yeats' ideal lady, Maud Gonne. Moon, in this poem, symbolize their affection is worn by water of time and becomes a metaphor for the effects of time on the human heart, a weariness presumably compounded by the labour of living "since Adam's fall".
The theme of this poem is quite clear: After God expelled Adam from the Garden of Eden, every valuable human accomplishment required hard work.

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"The Second Coming"

Behind the lines, there are four significant theme in this poem. First, the death of old era is the birth of new era. Second, history pattern like a circle; it recurs again. Third, a man who loses his belief or faith, and then regains his belief or faith. Fourth, a person hits the rock bottom-there is nowhere to go but up. 
Between the lines, there are symbols in the following terms. First, "Falcon" symbolizes human beings, while "Falconer" symbolized Christ. Likewise, "a rocking cradle" means Christ. Meanwhile, "anarchy" and "innocence" allude Russian revolution. "The best" and "The worst" also allude Russian revolution. Furthermore, "the second coming" share the connected image with an Egyptian sphinx shape and the rough beast. It symbolizes the character of new age.
The form of "The Second Coming" is loose iambic pentameter.

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"Sailing to Byzantium"

An old man seeks to move from the dying world of flesh and nature to the world of mind and spirit, where things are permanent and beautiful, as symbolized by Byzantium. Byzantium was noted for its holiness, rarefied intellectual life, and exquisite and unnatural art.
In stanza 1, the aged are out of place in a world of flesh. "Sensual music" is for the young, who neglect the timeless and spiritual. The music metaphor is carried on into stanzas 2 and 3.
Stanza 2 says that the aged, whose flesh is only a "tattered coat," must emphasize spirit-must teach the soul to "clap hands and sing." The soul's method of learning is to study monuments of the soul's magnificence, that is, creations of man's spirit, such as the culture of the "holy city of Byzantium."
In stanza 3, the speaker calls on the "singing-masters" (such as the figures of the holy sages on the walls of the noted Byzantine church of Saint Sophia). 
In stanza 4, the speaker is gold to be free of nature and "bodily form" and to have a "spiritual form," such as that made by Grecian goldsmiths. Their works are products of imagination, not external nature, and are thus spiritual and timeless.

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"Leda and the Swan"

The speaker retells a story from Greek mythology, the rape of Leda by the god Zeus, who takes the form of a swan. The speaker sees their union mark the beginning of Greek civilization, preceding the present Christian cycle; that's, the Trojan Wan brought about the end of the ancient mythological era and the birth of modern city. Stanzas 1 and 2 describe the union of Zeus and Leda; stanza is about the assault and stanza 2 is about Leda's emotions. In stanza 3, the speaker prophesies the Trojan-Greek era out of the union, while stanza 4 raises this question: when Leda entered with her body into the creative union, she put on the god's power, but did she put on the knowledge to foresee the terrible history of the Trojan War and its consequences?
In fact, this poem is a Petrarchan sonnet consisted of an octave and a sestet, and the rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFGEFG. The cut line in between stanza 3 and 4 represents a dramatic moment in time, conveying a death-like silence. Ironically, sonnet is thought to associate with romantic love, but this form is in contrast with the violent subject of this poem. When reading this poem, it is important to pay attention to the verbs so as to understand it. Generally speaking, the active verb forms belong to the Swan, such as "holds" and "engenders," while the passive verb forms belong to the rapped girl, such as "caressed," "caught," and "mastered." Besides, the verbs in the present tense imply an intense immediacy while those in the past tense distance the reader from what has just occurred. By the way, the use of alliteration also conveys the intensity of what is being portrayed in the poem.
Traditionally, the swan, a bird of beauty and grace, is symbolic of elegance and peacefulness; however, the images of the swan, such as "the great wings," "the dark webs," "indifferent beak," and "feathered glory," present a bird of violence. In other words, the action of the swan is total opposite to the traditional idea of a swan, thus it creates a feeling of horror and wonder. Other images such as "the broken wall" and "the burning roof and tower" suggest the Trojan War, which was said to been caused by the Helen of Troy, and consequently caused the death of Agamemnon.
On the whole, the rape of Leda of Zeus is an annunciation parallel to Mary's, who gave birth to Jesus Christ. Though the god's visitation initially excites terror, it also brings an insight into the momentous start of a new cycle.

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References

Brown, Harry, and Milstead, John. What The Poem Means, Summaries of 1300 Poems. 
Bookman: Taipei, Taiwan, 1994.
Day, Martin S. History of English Literature, 1837 to the Present. Doubleday: New York, 
1964.
Rosenthal, M. L. Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats, 
New York: Macmillan, 1962. 
Stallworthy, Jon. Between the lines: Yeats's poetry in the making, London: Oxford, 1963.
Yeats, William Butler. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. 2 vols. New 
York: Norton, 1993.
Yeats's Poetry. 13 Oct. 2002 <http://www.sparknotes.com>