Yeats
Form & Structure
“The often complex structure of his poems provides an appropriate framework for the intricacy of his argument. In his crafting and attention to detail, it seems as if Yeats
was aiming not so much for an integrity or faithfulness in reproducing his experiences, but an attempt to turn them into his conception of ‘Art’, not poetry as a means of
recounting a life but of giving permanent shape and beauty to his thoughts and feelings”.
Poem
When you are Old
Wild Swans at Coole
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ‘BETWEEN THE POTENCY AND THE EXISTENCE
Form & Structure
An appropriation of Pierre de Ronsard's "Quand Vous Serez Bien
Vieille," Sonnets Pour Helene (1578)
• 3 quatrains (4 lines each).
• Simple rhyming scheme – ABBA in each quatrain.
• Iambic pentameter is used – ten syllables per line, five iambic
feet per line, comprising one unstressed/one stressed syllable.
• First two stanzas contrast two tableaux (stillness/movement)
• Perfect dialectical structure – 3 stanzas: thesis, antithesis,
synthesis
• Language develops the musicality, mood, and aesthetic quality
of the poem.
• Written in 2nd person - develops regretful tone
• Assonance is used to give the poem a softer and dreamy sound.
• Has a fixed rhythm (abba) and written in iambic pentameter –
develops hypnotic quality.
• Five-line stanzas written in iambic, pentameter and trimeter.
• The varied metrical form develops the characterisation of the
speaker. It describes a speaker's weariness at aging. Much like
the rhythm itself, the speaker's thoughts are uneven and
unsustained. He's tired, weary; the varied rhythms add to the
halting, uncertain nature of the speaker's persona in the poem.
• However, the rhythm contrasts with the rhyming scheme which
is ABCBDD.
• The speaker is appreciating the beauty of his surroundings,
even as he's depressed by his own aging state. Still, that doesn't
diminish the majesty of the swans or nature in general. So, we
Steve Henry, Cherrybrook Technology high School
Meaning/Effect
• Love has a cosmic dimension
• Incorporates elements of Romanticism (emotional, poet as
visionary, self-expression).
• Subverts the traditional purpose of a sonnet by focusing on
regret and rejection, rather than simply celebrating love.
• Draws on previous poets’ ideas about love as a community
(Yeats is one of many).
• Uses form and appropriation to align himself with literary
tradition and demonstrates his artistry in verse.
• Form and appropriation adds self-reflexive element to his
composition.
• The passage of time and the tension between the desire for
permanence amid inevitable change.
• Through reflection on the specific and painful the poet
examines the mutability of time
• With its connotations of retreat and contemplation, the poem
examines the state of transition which precedes a period of
coldness and death.
 have this disturbed rhythmic flow that's nevertheless
surrounded by a pleasing rhyme structure. In this way, the
rhyme scheme imitates the symmetrical beauty of nature, even
if—deep down (and on a rhythmic level)—the speaker is
bummed out about his own situation. (Shmoop)
Easter 1916 The structure of Easter 1916 spells out the date the rebellion began,
April 24, 1916.
• There are 16 lines in the first and third stanzas
• and there are 24 lines in the second and fourth stanzas.
• There are also four representing April, the fourth month of the
year.
The Second Coming • Intense lyrical poem written in blank verse
• Harsh, masculine Modernist poem.
• 2 stanzas – 22 lines:
o Stanza 1 = 8 lines
o Stanza 2 = 14 lines in second stanza which is same as a
sonnet. Significance?
• Structurally poem moves from the general to the more specific
– octave makes general statements of universal significance.
• Accumulation of symbols and images proceeds with an oneiric
logic through a single sentence: falcon’s gyre widening,
disintegration, anarchy, tide of blood, drowning of ceremony of
innocence, weakness and passion.
• The antimonies in the poem play out not as polar opposites, but
in rhythmic rapport.
• Very rough iambic pentameter (unstressed syllable followed by
stressed syllable, pentameter means there’s 5 per line e.g. da
DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM).
• Study the rhyme and rhythm of the poem and use it to prove
this point
Leda and the Swan Petrarchan sonnet (14 -line poem)
Traditionally the sonnet has an octave – (8 lines) problem or
emotion is stated and a sestet – (6 lines) problem/tension resolved.
It is a two-part poem with two different but related parts.
• Yeats aestheticises the political, he makes it moving – cathartic,
- converts the political into tragic action
• Yeats saw History in symbolic and mystical terms- superhuman
forces emerge or invade human actors and changes them.
• Ideology/passion/conviction has a transformative effect.
• “Terribly beauty” – Out of chaos, instability, violence
• understanding and transformation is achieved.
• Change although disruptive is illuminating.
• The memorialising of experience
Meaning
• Cataclysmic change (dissolution, destruction, disharmony, lack
of continuity) and the anxiety it invokes.
• Tension between the desire for permanence and order, and the
ever-changing nature of life and history.
• The “Second Coming” is deeply concerned with humanity’s
search for a pattern that defines the history of humanity and
the cycle of time
• Certainty and the illusion of control is disrupted by variations of
rhythm and rhyme. Yeats’s desire for order and ceremony is
evident in the rhyme and rhythm but he can’t sustain it – idea
that we are subject to the forces of the world; can’t escape the
cycles of history permeates throughout the poem.
Allusion is central to the meaning of the poem
Meaning
• Seemingly disconnected moments have the propensity to
create profound change in the world
• Links between literary culture and historical change
 However, Yeats’ unconventional break in line 11 achieves a
tripartite structure. The last part unifies the three parts in symbolic
implication.
• Poem begins in medias res as the swan (Zeus) assaults Leda
with a “sudden blow”
• The single event, the impregnation of the mortal woman Leda
by the God Zeus inaugurates the beginning of a new time in
history. (annunciation poem)
• Economy of language powerful used
An Irish Airman Foresees his • 4 sets of quatrains (abab)
Death • 4 x 4 sets of quatrains= perfect square
• 16 lines but only 2 sentences: 1st sentence ends in line 8,
perfectly splits. (reflects desire for symmetry, certainty,
balance)
• Iambic = metrical “feet” with two syllables: unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable. It mimics the beat of the heart
duh-DUH, duh-DUH
e.g. exist, belong, predict, away, the one, we played, you know,
I can’t
• Tetrameter = consists of four iambs
• Iambic tetrameter: is a line of poetry with four beats of one
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. e.g. duh-
DUH, duh-DUH, duh-DUH, duh-DUH,
Among School Children Ottava Rima - 8 stanzas in 8-line verses
• This spatial construct symbolises perfection (square) = desire
for unity.
• Rhymed in two asymmetircal parts (sestet and couplet –
ababab cc – used in Yeats’s reflective poems of abababcc.
• A Roman numeral heads each stanza. “Ottava Rima was
traditionally used for heroic or epic poetry; it is likely no co-
incidence that the form is chosen for this particular poem of
epic reflection
• Final couplet of the poem breaks the pattern
• The cyclical nature of time and the volatile nature of change
(mid-gyre, state of flux, drives new experience/era)
• The possibility of union between humankind and God, between
natural and supernatural.
• In Yeats’s imaginative thought, such moments of transcendent
union leave behind in the physical world some vestige of the
divine condescension—the art object’s “immortality” in the
case of inspiration, for example.
The poem’s intricate structural control conveys Yeats ideas.
The ideas
• Illumination is a state of balance between temporal and
transcendent understanding.
• Structure echoes the Airman’s internal state and imitates flying
– poetic tribute to Robert Gregory’s love of flying.
• Rather than imagining Robert Gregory as a victim of war he
imagines him as a Romantic hero who is imbued with foresight
and control over his situation.
• Robert Gregory is an idealised figure - in terms of proxemics,
the airman is elevated above the ordinary mortal giving him a
kind of transcendence.
• Yeats search for symmetry and harmony.
• Explores the tension between the ideal and the real
• “Unity of being is a state of enlightenment that is
simultaneously involved with the turmoil of the mundane;
in other words, unity of being is paradoxically both
transcendent and manifest in the world”.
• The individual is the sum of all experiences
• Structure reflects speaker’s stage in life and assessment
of entire life (mimetic of epic form)