William Butler Yeats And Derek Walcott example essay topic

Thinking about the endless cycle of life, human beings have always been looking for a way to express their feelings and emotions. People broke the traditional standards or styles; and found new ways of expressing their ideas through art and poetry. The new movement was called Impressionism; and the best works of the Impressionist Age include William Butler Yeats's "The Wild Swans at Coole" and Derek Walcott's "The Season of Phantasmal Peace". In the both works the authors used symbolism and emotional connotations as the main tools that help a reader to concentrate on an emotional approach, examining works. In his essay "Magic", Yeats writes, "I cannot now think symbols less than the greatest of all powers... ". (p. 28). For a lot of contemporary authors, such as William Butler Yeats and Derek Walcott, birds were a source of inspiration, confrontation, and revelation.

The relationships between birds and human beings have always been complex, and often startling. Watching the life of birds, people compared it with their own. They often considered birds as God creatures that are simpler and useless than people are. In the both poems that were given, birds are both literal and metaphoric. Birds symbolize something eternal and quite different from human beings. We, people, with our haste to live, seem to forget about time and the beauty of life around us.

The poem "The Wild Swans at Coole" was written by William Butler Yeats. Kathleen Raine wrote that in the age of. ".. rising realism, political verse and University wit. ". Yeats tried to be innocent and noble, revealing desires of human harts and souls. The value of his symbolic images was expressions of timeless ideals. The structure of the poem reflects more closely the constructions of common speech.

It helps readers to perceive the poem as a deeply personal one. The author is watching the cycle of life through nature, his own cycle. From the very beginning of the poem he shows autumn as a decline of life, /"The trees are in their autumn beauty. / The picture of "a still sky" and "paths are dry" fills the reader with a sense of maturity.

The trees lose their leaves - they are ready to finish yearly cycle. The author is observing the swans in Coole Park. He told that nineteen years had been passed since he came to the place at the first time: /The nineteenth autumn has come upon me/ /Since I first made my count; / The author began to realize that he was getting older. He compared his life with nature. He showed that his life became "still" and "dry" after those nineteen years.

But suddenly the author saw swans. They were /"brilliant creatures... wheeling in great broken rings... ". / The swans were beautiful and full of life like Yeats' youth. That's why his /"heart is sore"/. The birds made a contrast to the calm flow of time.

They were used as a metaphor for the poet's youth. The author confessed that the youth had gone and never come back. Time will pass, but nothing will make the youth come back. /Companionable streams or climb the air; / /Their hearts have not grown old; / /Passion or conquest, wanders where they will, / /Attend upon them still. / At the end of the poem the author said that some day the youth would go away forever. /I awake some day/ /To find they have flown away?

/ The poem "The Season of Phantasmal Peace" was written by the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott. The poem is considered to be extraordinary because it has a lot of metaphors and symbols; and make a reader to create mental images.