The poetry of W.B Yeats distinctively falls into two groups
namely the early poems and the later poems.
As a poet Yeats always wrote poetry basing on the Irish themes and
subjects. But in treating the Irish elements Yeats time to time changed the
subject matters and the style. In the early poems, for example, Yeats explored
the themes of Irish folklore and myths,themes and settings to create a modern
sophisticated poetry.The Irish themes come into his poetry as the rememberence
of the glorious past,the myths and legends,the landscape, and the Irish
mythological heroes.
During his early career, Yeats’ own interest in mythology
and the oral traditions of folklore combined with high sense of nationalism
inspired him to create a poetry rich in the treatment of Celtic folklore and mythology.So,the
subject matter of his early poetry
consists of the traditional Celtic folklore and myth. By incorporating
into his work the stories and characters of Celtic origin, Yeats endeavored to
encapsulate something of the national character of his beloved Ireland.
Even in the early poems, with the passing of time, the poet makes increasing use of Irish myths and legends. He revives the old Irish myths and legends as well as `makes new myths out of the old ones and in this way seeks to bring about a political and a literary renaissance. Poetry thus fuses with patriotism, and he may fittingly be called the first national poet of young Ireland. He now sings in his poetry of ancient Gaelic heroes, like King Fergus. Aengus,Cuchulan,Queen Maeve, Oisin etc.
Even in the early poems, with the passing of time, the poet makes increasing use of Irish myths and legends. He revives the old Irish myths and legends as well as `makes new myths out of the old ones and in this way seeks to bring about a political and a literary renaissance. Poetry thus fuses with patriotism, and he may fittingly be called the first national poet of young Ireland. He now sings in his poetry of ancient Gaelic heroes, like King Fergus. Aengus,Cuchulan,Queen Maeve, Oisin etc.
The heroic life and adventures of these ancient, legendary
figures form the subject of Yeats’ early ballads. Earlier he had advised the
young poets of Ireland to choose subjects from their own native land
where,’there is no river or mountain that is not associated in the memory with
some legend or event,” and if, the
ballads he deals with deal with such local traditions as well as with legends
which have a more national character.
Yeats’ early poetry is frankly an escape poetry. It takes us
into a world of phantasy, a dream-world, a world of Irish countryside,
folk-lore peasant beliefs and traditions. The poet escapes from the world of
reality into an ideal fairy-world of Irish mythology. In the beginning his
dream world is merely a beautiful, ideal region in the thinned out English
romantic tradition. The influences on him are English, Arcadian, Spenerian and
Shelleyian, and even in his treatment of the Irish themes he displays.
Now let us discuss some individual poems to see how he
treated Irish elements in his early poems.The poems that clearly reflect his
interest in Irish myths and legends are ’The Stolen Child’,Fergus and the
Druid’, Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea’,The Hosting of the Sidhe’,Th Wild Swans
a t Coole’,Coole Park,Coole Park and Ballylee, The Ballad of
Moll Magee” , “The Ballad of Father Gilligan etc.
Yeats’s first notable interest in Irish materials is seen in
his early poem ’The Stolen Child’.The poem is based on Irish legend and Irish
setting.The poem,in which a fairy speaks to a human child in a beguiling voice
,is set in Sligo,where the yeats used to spend their holidays.The voice calls
Where
dips the rocky highland
Of
Sleuth Wood in the lake
There
lies a leafy island
Where
flapping herons wake
The
drowsy water rats;
There
we’ve hid our faery vats
Full
of berries
And
of reddest stolen cherries.
The names of the places mentioned in the poem are located in
Sligo and the poem reflects the poet’s interest in the belief in the
supernatural that he found in the west of Ireland,in particular the idea that
the faeries carried off children from the human world.
Yeats’s treatment of Irish materials ,specially the old
legends and sagas are also seen in his work The Rose.In this collection
specially two poems - Fergus and the Druid’, Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea’
are full of Irish elements.The former deals with the Ulster’s legendary king
Fergus,who married Ness.The poem is a conversation between the Druid and
Fergus,who was persuaded by his wife Ness to allow Ness’s son (by previous marriage)
MacNessa to rule the country for a year.But when the king gave the power,he was
trickily driven out of the country at the end of the year.Fergus passed his
days hunting,fighting,and feasting.Thus,the poem is based on an Irish saga.
The poem ’Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea’ deals with the Irish Achilles or the Hercules
Cuchulain.The poem is about the death of Cuchulain,the greatest Irish
mythological hero,who appears many times throughout Yeats' work.
The legend of
Cuchulain goes back to the pre-Christain time.He appears in the Ulster Cycle of
stories.Cuchulain,the superhuman warrior figure had a divine from the
supernatural father figures such as Conall Cernach.As a youth, Cuchulain defeats
one hundred and fifty of King Conchobar's troops on his way to the royal court.
Suffice to say that Cuchulain is the hero most identified with Ireland and
represents both positive and negative aspects of the Irish people and their
struggle.
In the poem, " To Ireland in the Coming Times"
Yeats again draws upon Irish folklore and mythic symbols and sets them against
a backdrop of national identity. When the poet writes, " When Time began
to rant and rage / The measure of her flying feet / Made Ireland's heart begin
to beat; " He is speaking of the affects of the industrial
revolution," When Time began to rant and rage." How the
pre-industrial rhythm of life had been interrupted by the hourly wage in the
cities, as opposed to the pastoral life of the country that was governed by the
changing of the seasons, rather than the movement of the hands of a clock. This
accelerated pace of life and of time," The measure of her flying
feet," was reviled by Yeats and he wrote of his distaste of current
English life, referring to passions that a man might yet find in Ireland,
"love of the Unseen Life and love of country."
In the collection The Rose,Yeats emphasizes Irish imagery;
the rose, the faeries and the Druid that are all closely associated with
Ireland and are used here to disparage the rigid and structured English world view.
Another poem that illustrates how Yeats melds folklore and
nationalism is "The Song of Wandering Aengus." In the poem, Yeats
refers to Aengus, the Irish god of love. He was said to be a young, handsome
god that had four birds flying about his head. These birds symbolized kisses
and inspired love in all who heard them sing.The poem deals with the
shape-changing of the fairies and tells a story in which a fish is transformed
into a beautiful woman whom Aengus spends the rest of his life trying to find. In
the poem, Yeats strays from the actual myth of Aengus. Yeats wrote,
"Though I am old with wandering/ Through hollow lands and hilly
lands." In the actual myth, Aengus was still young when he found his love.
"The Song of Wandering Aengus" was about longing and searching,
rather than about a song of found love.
Thus,Yeats took inspiration from the myths and legends of
ancient Ireland in order to create a conspicuously Irish literature.
Yeats’s later poems
Yeats believed the idea that poetry should be changed to
adjust the changes around us.So, with the passage of time his poetry also
changed. In his later poems he wrote about the contemporary political and
cultural issues that concered his Ireland istead of about the Irish myths and
legends. The other features of the later poetry include the richness,
complexity and intricacy. This richness arises more particularly from his
blending together of images drawn from widely divergent sources and from
different layers of experience.
Yeats brings together varied and desperate images from
different levels of experience and different levels of history, and is able in
this way to enclose incredible vastness within the limited space of a short
lyric.The greatness of Yeats is seen in the fact that his mind now moves with
great agility from one disparate concept to another, and the poet succeeds in
bringing together and reconciling the opposites of life.
The later poems display Yeats’ mythopoetic imagination to its
best advantage. The poet’s mastery over his craft is further seen in the fact
that words obey his call and he uses them like a master with perfect ease and
self-confidence to express swift transitions in thought, often highly abstract
thought.
Yeats’ later poetry also shows his skilful manipulation of
the most varied stanza-patterns. As some one has rightly remarked, the credit
of freeing English lyric from the tyranny of the Iambic must go to Yeats.
The changes in Yeats’s poerty are visible in his ’The Green
Hemlet and Other Poems’.Two poems of the collection clearly reflect his new
nationalism.These are In Upon a house Shaken by the Land Agitation and
In Upon a house Shaken by the Land Agitation Yeats makes an
explicit and timely comment upon a
political issue.The title of the poem refers to Land Reform ,an
important movement in 19th century Irish legislation to bring agriculture and
the peasantry out of the incredibly impoverished past by changing the relation
between landlords and tenant.The 1903 Wyndham Land Act provided for bonuses to
landlords who sold property to tenants on easy terms.
In another poem namely ’Easter 1916’ Yeats also deals with a
contemporay political issue.The poem commemorates the Easter Rising of 24 April
1916 when the memebers of the Irish Republican Brotherhood under the leadership
of Patricia Pearse rose against British rule of Ireland.The rising was subdued
and the ring leaders were put to death.The poem carefully expresses an
ambiguous attitude of quallified support for the rebels.Like the rebels Yeats
was also willing to free Ireland from all kinds of English dominance but he
hated the violence.He indirectly accused the rebels for overtuning the works of
years and felt very despondent about the future.
His such poems as The Wild Swans a t Coole’,Coole Park,and
Coole Park and Ballylee also bear his nationalism.Yeats uses swan as a symbol
of tranquility,beauty,and pride-the typical Irish characteristics in his
poetry.These poems are also in the descriptions of the Irish landscapes.
His another remarkable poem ’Leda and the Swan’ can also be
interpreted as literary attack against England’s harsh treatment of Irland.The
sonnet composed in 1923 refers to the myth of the rape of Leda by Zeus in the
form of a swan.The poem represents the dominance of Swan over Leda.Yeats’s uses
of such imageries as ’ a sudden blow’,’the staggering girl’,’caught in the
bill’ clearly picture the violence used by Zeus.Here the relation between Leda
and Swan is the relation of that of the oppressed and the oppressed,the
colonized and the colonizer.As it is clear the colonizer is England and the
colonized is Ireland.The former excercised violence against the later.The
interpretaion seems to be convincing if we consider the time of its
composition.
Yeats had a high sense of nationalism.His defth of
nationalism becomes more evident if we compare his work with the works of T.S
Eliot.Eliot took Europe and its war-fragmented culture as its Waste Land.So,the
English poets became disillusioned with their country after the first world
war.But Yeats,who spent two thirds of his life out of Ireland still retained
Ireland as his imaginative homeland.
Yeats’s sense of nationalism is also seen from the fact that
he often made a contrast between peaceful Ireland and industrial England.He
also compared the Irish mythology culture with the cultures of classical Greece
and Byzantium.
Thus, we see that there are some marked contrasts between
his early and later poems. During his early career Yeats was devoted to the
cause of Irish nationalism and played a significant part in the Celtic Revival
Movement, promoting the literary heritage of Ireland through his use of
material from ancient Irish sagas.
