The “Wild Swans at Coole” presents Yeats contemplating his own loneliness, sadness, aging, and loss in comparison to swans that represent ageless beauty. The poem is set in Coole – a lakeside resort, which the poet is visiting in autumn.
The poet is viewing and contemplating the beauty of Swans. He is counting the swans before they all suddenly fly away. The swans are depicted as an elusive symbol or ideal of beauty, youth, passion, and art, which the poet believes has passed him by as he slowly ages.
1. Full text of the poem
Below is the full text of the poem. The square brackets ([5]) indicate the lines of the poem, which will be referred to in the analysis.
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones [5]
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings [10]
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore, [15]
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air; [20]
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful; [25]
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
2. The Wild Swans at Coole summary
The poem is divided into five stanzas. I present the summary on a stanza-by-stanza basis.
Stanza 1
In Stanza 1, the poet describes the autumn landscape backdrop before introducing the swans. The scene is described as beautiful and still. It should be noted that the autumn landscape reflects the state of being of the poet.
The poet is approaching middle age, and he thinks that autumn symbolizes the stage before the onset of old age (or the winter of his years). The calmness also means his lack of activity in community or public life, which will be further explained later on in the article.
The poet counts 59 swans. This number may have significance. Throughout the rest of the poem, the swans are described as romantic pairs. The fact that one swan is without a companion may be less of a fact than it is the poet identifying himself as a swan without a romantic partner or companion.
Stanza 2
In Stanza 2, Yeats provides biographical information that relates his personal life to the swans. We learn that it has been 19 years since he came here to count the swans.
The poet moves from this to explaining how the swans flew away just after he finished counting. This suggests that the swans are elusive and defy categorization or pinning down by the author.
Stanza 3
In Stanza 3, the poet makes his sadness explicit. We had notes of sadness in the still and beautiful autumn imagery. However, here the poet makes it clear in Lines 12–13:
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
The poet is sad because of changes in his life circumstances which he doesn’t specify and we are left to guess at.
Stanza 4
Yeats describes the behavior of the swans that he is observing in the landscape. The entire stanza focuses on romanticizing the birds. They are described as “lover by lover” (Line 18). Even the landscape itself is imbued with romance, and the streams are described as “companionable” (Line 19).
The swans are portrayed as forever young at heart:
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
Stanza 5
Stanza 5 is the last stanza of the poem and presumably, the swans are now back “on the still water” (Line 24) from their flight described in Stanza 2. Despite the swans being still, we get the same sense of their elusiveness to the poet.
Yeats senses that the ideal of eternal youth, passion, and romance that the Swans represent will eventually become completely lost to him due to old age or due to the loss of energy or faith. The poem ends with him trying to imagine a life when all that the swans symbolize is beyond him or completely lost to him:
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
Here, the poet envisages a world where he has lost all passion, youth, or romance. The inspiration that the swans represent will motivate or delight other men’s eyes, but not his.
3. Biographical-historical background
W.B. Yeats wrote The Wild Swans at Coole in 1916. The poem was written when the poet visited Lady Gregory’s estate at Coole Park. The period was an unsettling one for the politics of Ireland, as well as the Yeats’ personal love life. The Wild Swans at Coole was written just after the Easter Rising, a significant event in Ireland’s fight for independence from British rule.
i. Public life. The Easter Rising was organized by Irish republicans seeking independence from British rule. It began on Easter Monday in Dublin. Under the leadership of Irish Republicans, such as Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, along with approximately 1,600 volunteers, seized strategic locations, declaring an Irish Republic.
The British military quickly responded, quashing the uprising within a week. Though it failed militarily, the uprising ignited Irish nationalism, leading to widespread support for independence. The British execution of its leaders turned public opinion in favor of the cause, setting the stage for Ireland’s eventual path to independence.
Yeats himself was involved in Irish nationalism; however, he always sought to distance himself by portraying his public image as that of the artist or poet before anything else. The poem can be described as the poet retreating from public life and politics and reflecting on the relationship between himself and his role as a poet or artist.
For example, the serene beauty of Coole Park can be seen as a reflection of the poet’s state of stillness and retreat of public life:
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
The poem makes no mention of any political struggles or turmoil. In that regard, the poem has much in common with romantic poetry, which uses natural landscapes as an occasion to contemplate the deeply personal especially matters of love.
ii. Personal love life. The poem also likely reflects Yeats’ grief and disappointment in his thirty-year attempt to woo Maud Gonne. W.B. Yeats experienced repeated heartbreak in his courtship of Maud Gonne, a passionate Irish nationalist, whom he regarded as his muse. Yeats proposed to her multiple times over several decades, but she rejected him each time, prioritizing her political work and later marrying John MacBride, a fellow nationalist.
Despite the constant rejection, Yeats remained captivated by her, often reflecting this unrequited love in his poetry. In 1917, two years before the poem was composed, he shifted his affection to her daughter, Iseult Gonne, and proposed to her as well. However, she also declined. Yeats’ references to the swans as lovers and companionable may well reflect his sense of loss from these disappointments in love.
We see this in the unusual count of swans that end at No. 59. The swan missing a mate likely represents Yeats.
4. Themes
The main themes of the poem include grief and disappointment, the nature of the relationship between poet and art, and unrequited love. These themes are only subtly reflected in the poem.
Yeats does a wonderful job of hiding or incorporating his meaning by focusing on the natural landscape and the poetic language and imagery that he uses to describe the swans.
i. Grief and disappointment
The mood and tone of the poem are one of quiet grief and disappointment. The poet does not explicitly name the source of his disappointment and grief, but they are obvious in the imagery of the poem. Also, he says clearly in Stanza 3:
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
Although Yeats does not make it clear the specific experiences and circumstances that make him sad, the facts of Yeats’ life and poetic career are well-known. His failed courtship of Maud and Iseult Gonne and his inability to fully participate in the revolutionary politics of Ireland as a public figure probably contributed to his melancholy.
ii. Poet vs art
“The Wild Swans at Coole” could be interpreted as an extended metaphor demonstrating the relationship between the poet and his art. The swans represent art, which is supposed to be eternal and beautiful in the midst of change.
This is unlike Yeats’ life, which, to him at the time, seemed to be subsumed in grief, heartbreak, and disappointment. The ugliness of life is overtaking his art it seems. The ideal of art and eternal beauty that the swans represent is now beyond him and is leaving him behind. He ends the poem by explicitly stating this fear:
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
The poet is looking and thinking beyond himself here. The ideal that the swans represent will continue to inspire others, even after he becomes completely disillusioned.
iii. Unrequited love
Again, the poet does not explicitly mention a specific heartbreak or circumstances. However, it is obvious that the swans paddling “lover by lover” is stirring the heartbreak that he suffers from the unrequited love he had for Maud Gonne.
The last line of the first stanza, which mentions 59 swans also reflects that. The last swan without a mate, as mentioned earlier, likely represents Yeats. The poem on the surface is classic Romantic poetry, where contemplation of nature is used as an occasion to talk about heartbreak or some deep exquisite yearning.
However, the poem rises above Romantic poetry since the swans are imbued with a deep and mysterious symbolic significance that goes beyond unrequited love. They represent an ideal for the eternal beauty and inspiration of poetry, and by extension, art.
5. Rhetorical analysis
By rhetorical analysis, we mean to explore how the poem achieves its effects through form (that is rhyme or meter) and its use of rhetorical devices. The poem uses a regular rhyming scheme and meter pattern.
In terms of rhetorical devices, it relies heavily on symbolism and picturesque imagery, as well as sound-based rhetorical devices such as alliteration. This is discussed further below.
Form and meter
The poem is made up of five regular stanzas written in mostly iambic meter. In each stanza, the first and third lines are in tetrameter, this means four stressed beats in eight syllables. The second, fourth, and sixth lines are written in trimeter, that is they have six syllables, with three of them stressed. Lastly, the fifth line is written in pentameter.
It also has a regular rhyming pattern of ABCBDD. The poem is written in a casual and conversational tone that is carefully balanced with its traditional rhyming and meter scheme. It does so partly by using enjambment, that is continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break. Using enjambment in this way while employing traditional rhyming and meter patterns allows poets to enjoy a style that is conversational and musical at the same time.
Rhetorical devices
The main rhetorical device used in the poem is imagery and symbolism. In addition to this, the poet makes use of sound-based literary devices such as alliteration and assonance. Let’s take a look at each.
i. Symbolism
This is the main rhetorical device used in the poem. The swans represent eternal beauty, youth, and artistic inspiration. In addition to that, the poet skillfully makes them reflect his own heartbreak and loneliness by counting 59 swans, with one missing a partner representing himself.
The way in which Yeats uses symbolism in the poem is quite skillful. The poem can be enjoyed on two levels. The description of the swans and the natural beauty in which they exist alone makes for good poetry. For example, in the first stanza:
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
This is a simple description of a natural scene with no heavy-handed or complicated metaphors before introducing the swans. We have already mentioned the subtle way in which Yeats alludes to his own personal unhappiness and heartbreak by counting up to 59 swans.
In the second stanza, Yeats describes how the swans flew off almost before he could finish counting. Again, this alludes to how the swans represent an ideal that is beyond him or that escapes him.
ii. Personal allusion
Yeats’ other poem that features a swan is Leda and the Swan. It is an allusion to the classical Greek myth of the rape of Leda by Zeus. In this poem, however, there are no classical allusions.
The swans are a personal symbol created by Yeats to represent an ideal. The entire poem is colored by a deep disappointment and grief that the poet subtly alludes to. He does not name or mention any specific event. But is obvious that he is grieving deeply from some personal hurt.
The allusions in the poem are all personal and mysterious. We get a hint of them in lines like the following:
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
We have already mentioned the possible sources of Yeats’ grief and disappointment in love.
iii. Sound-based rhetorical devices
The poet makes use of several sound-based rhetorical devices. They include:
Alliteration
Consonance
Assonance
Alliteration means the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words adjacent to each other. Examples of alliteration include:
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
However, the best example in my mind is the following:
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
See how many more examples of alliteration you can spot on your own. “Cold companionable streams is also an example of assonance, that is, when vowel sounds in adjacent words are repeated. Consonance is also closely related to the poem’s rhyming scheme. For example:
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
There is assonance in the long “e” sound in wheeling, rings, and wings. There is also consonance (repetition of consonant sounds) in the repetition of words ending in the “ing” sound.
iv. Imagery
The descriptive imagery of the poem is among the most impressive aspects of the poem. Some of the descriptions of images and sounds leave a lasting impression. For example, the description of swans “mounting” and “their clamorous wings” are unusual descriptions, which nonetheless accurately describe the creatures and how they fly.
Anyone who has ever seen swans take flight would immediately understand the description. The same thing can be said about a phrase such as “climb the air” (Line 21). The poet uses the swans as a symbolic representation of feelings that are deep, complex, hidden, and subtle.
He is contemplating the disappointment of his life — disappointments that threaten to make him disillusioned about the power of his art and role as a poet. However, his careful attention to descriptive imagery and form in the poem shows that he respects the power and beauty of the swans in and of themselves. He pays tribute to their beauty while simultaneously turning them into eternal and mythic symbols of art and inspiration.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, November 03). The Wild Swans at Coole: Summary and Analysis. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/the-wild-swans-at-coole |
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