The Wild Swans at Coole

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The Wild Swans at Coole - William Butler Yeats [1865-1939] Relevant Background WB Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin. His family was upper class. Yeats received classes in art and thus could paint a scene well with words. As he reached manhood, much of his education consisted of private tuition and reading. Despite dyslexia and early difficulty with learning the alphabet, he turned into the greatest Irish Poet of the Twentieth Century. Yeats felt that his powers as a poet were reducing with age. He wrote ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ in 1915 when he turned fifty. Yeats first visited Coole Park County Galway nineteen years before in 1896. In this poem, Yeats compares the present and the past. He contrasts the swans as a species with himself as an individual. As a species the swans will live on after he dies. Their beauty will remain. He by contrast, is aging and fading. He will eventually die. Summary In the first stanza Yeats describes a sweet autumn scene. The weather is dry and calm. The trees are covered in multi-coloured leaves. It is October. Coole Lake is like a mirror reflecting the sky. The water is lapping at the edge of the lake. Fifty-nine swans float on the water. In the second stanza, Yeats admits that it is nineteen years since he first counted the swans on Coole Lake. By emphasising the word autumn here, he is showing that he views himself as being in the autumn of his years. He remembers that the swans flew away loudly as a group in huge broken circles. This sudden flight disturbed the tranquillity of the scene. In the third stanza, he claims to have looked a lot at the fantastic swans. Now he feels emotional; his heart is sore. Everything in Yeats’ life has changed during those nineteen years. When he first heard the bell like beat of the swans’ wings he walked more energetically and
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