Content. Introduction. Chapter. I. Famous Irish Poet

2.2 The aspects of modernism in The Wild Swans of Coole by W.B. Yeats.
W.B. Yeats wrote the poem "The Wild Swans at Coole," which was included in a collection with the same name in 1917. The poem, which Yeats wrote in his fifties, depicts a speaker visiting Ireland's Coole Park (a place which Yeats himself had visited). He compares the current situation to his first trip to the park, which was 19 years ago, while he watches a large flock of swans. Despite the speaker's admiration for swans, the entire poem has a mournful, regretful tone to it. The speaker attributes to the swans the qualities he feels he currently lacks. The origin of the speaker's emotions has been the subject of numerous rumors. Many commentators also point out that the poem's timing—shortly before the end of World War I, amid the Irish battle for independence from the British—is extremely significant. The poem itself discreetly alludes to lost love.⁸ In the melancholy poetry "The Wild Swans at Coole," the speaker revisits the Irish lake (the "Coole" of the title) that he first visited 19 years previously. He continues to watch this gaggle of swans as he had done years earlier. But now the beauty and liveliness of the swans inspire the speaker with a melancholy emotion rather than joy. This is due to the fact that while the speaker's own life has been irrevocably altered by the passing of time, the "unwearied" swans appear to have remained the same and are still passionate, enigmatic, and brilliant. In other words, the swans serve as a reminder to the speaker that he has aged and has become farther distant from the energy and possibilities of his youth. The poem implies that growing older brings a real sense of loss for all the life left behind. The poem primarily tells the story of two moments: the first, when the speaker remembers his first trip to Coole, and the second, when he finds himself back there in the present (though it's unclear whether he visited in between those two instances). The poem is able to show how the speaker's zest for life has been diminished and how his weariness has affected him by contrasting these experiences. The opening line of the poem establishes that the speaker believes he is in the "fall" of his life. The overall scene creates a sense of transition that mirrors the speaker's perception that, in the end, his ambitions and dreams—later referred to as "passion or conquest"—have been let down. The speaker begins to make a distinction between the present and the time when he first saw the countless exquisite swans on the lake (19 autumns ago). He calls the swans "brilliant," indicating his admiration for them. But since he first stepped on the shore at Coole, "[a]ll's changed." The speaker contrasts the way he perceives himself to have changed over the years with the brilliance of the swans, which is a type of constant—true then and true today. The speaker used to have "a lighter tread" back then, but as he gets older and has more life experience, he becomes metaphorically heavier and slower. This naturally contrasts with the gracefulness of the swans, which is always there and, to the speaker, appears to be unchanged across time. To that end, the speaker is reminded of his own past self by the swans' way of being. The poem implies that the speaker once possessed more of the characteristics he sees in the swans now by describing the disparities between them and him in the present. The speaker can no longer say of himself what the swans can: "Unwearied still," and "their hearts have not gone cold." He has supposedly grown weary and his heart has gotten cold, according to the poetry. What specifically has occurred in the nearly two decades since the speaker's initial visit to Coole is not made clear. The reader can infer that, in part, the speaker laments for lost love based on the use of the words "lover[s]" and "hearts." The poem was written just after the horrors of the First World War and amid the ongoing struggle for Irish independence from the British, but critics also theorize that given the period of the poem's composition, the loss that the speaker feels stretches more broadly.⁹ Nevertheless, the details are not really the main concern at hand. What matters is the speaker's perception that these changes are permanent because time moves only one way and the pleasant moments, like the speaker's first trip to Coole, are now only memories. That is to say, there is no turning back. That explains why the speaker seems to experience such a bittersweet reaction to the swans. Their method of being has a timeless, even magisterial, quality. They continue to be "mysterious, gorgeous," and appear free to "travel where they choose." They serve as a reminder of the speaker's losses to time. Thus, "The Wild Swans at Coole" depicts a character who is having a difficult time accepting the direction that their life has gone. This ultimately illustrates how life has an irreversible course and that there is no turning back or changing the past. The speaker clings to happy recollections, but they are tainted with grief because they will never again materialize into actual events.¹⁰