Yeats Analysis
Samantha Clark
Forster
ENLT 2523
19 September 2011
Yeats and the Everlasting “Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet,” writes the famed William Butler Yeats on one of his favorite subjects: eternity. Yeats’s poetry often deals with the conflict of the temporal and the eternal. The chronology of Yeats’s life allows for a very interesting exploration of this conflict—coming of age at the end of the nineteenth century, Yeats’s literary career spans both the close of the romantic and the beginning of the modern eras of poetry. Yeats thus presents an interesting body of work in which he moves from an almost archaic style to one less flowery and embellished (clearly influenced by Ezra Pound). Despite the evolution of style, though, Yeats continually returns to the temporal and eternal as central contrasting themes in his work. From “To the Rose upon the Rood of Time,” in which a young Yeats appeals to the eternal rose to save him from the temporal world and its woes, to the much later “Sailing to Byzantium,” in which an older Yeats, cognizant of his death, entreaties the artists of the Hagia Sophia to immortalize him in one of their famed mosaics. Humans back to the age of Gilgamesh have feared death, but Yeats’s use of eternity stems less from fear and more from desire. His constant juxtaposition of the temporal and the eternal reflects his own desire to rise above the “dust” of the current world and become something that will transcend the mad and transient world he sees collapsing around him. Young Yeats explores the nature of eternity in a truly romantic fashion. He clings to nature, “straining after dreams and visions, brooding on loss and unrequited desire” (Ramazani 90). His early romantic proclivities evidence themselves beautifully in the opener to his first collection of poems, “To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time.” “Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!” entreats the young Yeats. Yeats
Forster
ENLT 2523
19 September 2011
Yeats and the Everlasting “Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet,” writes the famed William Butler Yeats on one of his favorite subjects: eternity. Yeats’s poetry often deals with the conflict of the temporal and the eternal. The chronology of Yeats’s life allows for a very interesting exploration of this conflict—coming of age at the end of the nineteenth century, Yeats’s literary career spans both the close of the romantic and the beginning of the modern eras of poetry. Yeats thus presents an interesting body of work in which he moves from an almost archaic style to one less flowery and embellished (clearly influenced by Ezra Pound). Despite the evolution of style, though, Yeats continually returns to the temporal and eternal as central contrasting themes in his work. From “To the Rose upon the Rood of Time,” in which a young Yeats appeals to the eternal rose to save him from the temporal world and its woes, to the much later “Sailing to Byzantium,” in which an older Yeats, cognizant of his death, entreaties the artists of the Hagia Sophia to immortalize him in one of their famed mosaics. Humans back to the age of Gilgamesh have feared death, but Yeats’s use of eternity stems less from fear and more from desire. His constant juxtaposition of the temporal and the eternal reflects his own desire to rise above the “dust” of the current world and become something that will transcend the mad and transient world he sees collapsing around him. Young Yeats explores the nature of eternity in a truly romantic fashion. He clings to nature, “straining after dreams and visions, brooding on loss and unrequited desire” (Ramazani 90). His early romantic proclivities evidence themselves beautifully in the opener to his first collection of poems, “To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time.” “Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!” entreats the young Yeats. Yeats
Cited: Ramazani, Jahan, Richard Ellman, and Robert O’Clair, eds. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. New York, NY: Norton, 2003. Print. Wallace, Mark. Factoidz. 12 April 2011. Electronic. 21 September 2011. Yeats, William B. "Easter, 1916." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellman, and Robert O’Clair. New York, NY: Norton, 2003. 105. Print. Yeats, William B. "Sailing to Byzantium." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellman, and Robert O’Clair. New York, NY: Norton, 2003. 123. Print. Yeats, William B. "The Song of Wandering Aengus." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellman, and Robert O’Clair. New York, NY: Norton, 2003. 98. Print. Yeats, William B. "To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellman, and Robert O’Clair. New York, NY: Norton, 2003. 94. Print. Yeats, William B. "The Wild Swans at Coole." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellman, and Robert O’Clair. New York, NY: Norton, 2003. 107. Print.