YEATS’ THEMESReoccurring themes in Yeats’ works

What are their importance?

And,How is each theme portrayed?

Time

Time is a big theme in Yeats’ works Often Time is portrayed negatively and seems to be the

real enemy, like in ‘Broken Dreams’ and ‘In the Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Constance...’

In Yeats’ later works it seems he is both obsessed and frustrated with time

Time in Broken Dreams

“There is grey in your hair” –Maud’s beauty withered with time

“But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed –” –Maud was once beautiful in her youth, Maud may have lost some of her appeal; but Yeats looks forward to the afterlife when her former beauty will be restored (which is quite fickle). It seems here beauty is only in the eye of the beholder

The enjambment in the poem also reflects time as Yeats uses this technique to reminisce about the past when Maud was in her prime

Here time has stolen Maud of her youth and beauty which has changed some of Yeats’ feelings for her

In the Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markiewicz

“Blossom from the summer’s wreath” –as from the first four lines, the girls were clearly beautiful in their youth but here Yeats is saying that time has stripped them for their beauty as they are now “When withered old and skeleton-gaunt”

“Dear shadows” – shadows of the past, past memories “Have no enemy but time” –time is the true enemy here

As in ‘Broken Dreams’, time seems to have a damaging effect on the girls’ beauty as it has ‘withered’ them.

However time is not so bad as at the start of the poem Yeats’ is reminiscing about the old Georgian mansion, where he himself spent a lot of time at: “The light of evening, Lissadell/ Great windows open to the south”

Time in the Cold Heaven

“Vanished and left but memories, that should be out of season/With the hot blood of youth..” –here Yeats could be looking back on his youth, these memories are however ambiguous as we don’t know whether these are good memories or if he is reflecting on his mistakes

Time in The Wild Swans at Coole

“Under the October twilight the water/ Mirrors a still sky;”-nature seems to be harmonious; but also here we are reminded by the sky that with time and the change of seasons that the sky changes too

“The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me” “in great broken rings”- time and its continuous cycle,

time is something greater than us humans: destiny, ‘the bigger picture’

The structure itself almost mimics time as each stanza in the poem seems to reflect a different part of the year/season. However, time has only left Yeats lonely and deep in reflection

Time in The Man and the Echo

“Did that play of mine send out/ Certain men the English shot?”

“Did words of mine put too great strain/ On that woman’s reeling brain?”

“Could my spoken words have checked/ That whereby a house lay wrecked?”

Yeats here is reflecting back on his life, doubting himself, wondering if he did the right thing

Again, a reoccurring thought of Yeats’, with time comes damage as we see by the third quote as it refers to the destruction of Coole Park and Lady Gregory’s mansion

Nature

The Cat and the Moon The moonlight shines on the cat making the cat magnificent,

complimenting the cat as Yeats’ works as the moon (Maud) is the muse behind Yeats’ works

The Wild Swans at Coole “Under the October twilight the water/ Mirrors a still sky;” “Unwearied still, lover by lover,” Here nature is harmonious as the water is still and the swans are sat

side by side

The Man and the Echo In contrast to ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ Nature here is volatile and

destructive, even to an extent random and pointless “Up there some hawk or owl has struck,

Dropping out of sky or rock,A stricken rabbit is crying out,And its cry distracts my thought”

Nature

Sailing to Byzantium Nature here is presented to be harmonious “the young in

one another’s arms, birds in the trees” –Yeats seems bitter as they have each other and their looks, Yeats again is wallowing in self-pity

The Stolen Child “wandering water gushes” “the waters and the wild” –idea of being free and in touch

with nature

Binary Opposites

Yeats uses opposites to emphasis his main points in his poems

In The Cold Heaven opposites are used to re-enforce that some relationships/concepts cannot work as they are so different

Opposites in The Fisherman, are used to contrast the past, which Yeats clings so tightly to, and the modern world which Yeats despises. Art can no longer survive in a hedonistic world where all that matters is procession and pleasure

In The Cat and the Moon, the use of binary opposites show how distant the cat and the moon are emotionally and physically. No matter how hard the cat (Yeats) tries he could never have the moon (Maud) , the two are so different maybe it was never meant to be...

Death

Broken Dreams “But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed –” Here Yeats

looks forward to the afterlife when he will be reunited with Maud, and her former beauty has been restored

The Cold Heaven “rook-delighting” – an omen of death; Yeats is not sure if

the afterlife is a good or bad thing as it is uncertain what awaits him

A death-delighting heaven which is a very unlikely combination when we think of the two

“Riddled with light”-this is used to represent the body dying

Death

The Man and the Echo “Echo. Lay down and die.” – is death the only way out? “What do we know but that we face/ One another in this

place?” –here, like in ‘The Cold Heaven’, Yeats is questioning what is there after death and if there is a Heaven

The Second Coming “The blood dimmed tide is loose” –here it is referencing

Revelation 17:3-6 which says that ‘the beast’ will come as a predecessor to the second coming of Christ.

The poem ends with a rhetorical question leaving our fates in the balance of life and death

Death

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death The tight structure creates an echo effect as if the airman is

certain to die “I KNOW that I shall meet my fate/ Somewhere among the

clouds above;”-here there is a sense of that the airman is destined to die

“In balance with this life, this death” –the airman’s life in the hands of fate

“waste of breath” –is there no way to stop this from happening? “A lonely impulse of delight” –this phrase itself is ambiguous;

however it could be interoperated as the airman taking pleasure in killing/death

Sailing to Byzantium Yeats paints a negative self-portrait, he is bitter about his own

ageing and decay therefore he reduces himself to “a tattered coat upon a stick” “An aged man is but a paltry thing”

An Ideal Ireland

The Fisherman “The freckled man who goes/ To a gray place on a hill/ In gray

Connemara clothes/ At dawn to cast his flies—” –here we have an idealistic picture of a rural Ireland where men work hard doing physical tasks

Yeats longs for an ideal audience who appreciate art and are just as intelligent as himself

The use of opposites emphasises that the old world (a world long past) and the modern world do not ‘mix’ as they are so different “as cold/ And passionate as the dawn”

The Man and the Echo “In a cleft that's christened Alt”-this is a reference to a hill in

Ireland that is supposed to a burial ground for Celtics, Yeats was very interested in Irish Mythology and probably dreamt/imagined himself in a such time

An Ideal Ireland

In ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ Yeats feels he no longer belongs in Ireland as it has changed so much from what he knows ““that is not a country for old men”