Conflicts in W.B. Yeats' poetry Anonymous 12th Grade

Utilizing multidisciplinary knowledge gained from analysis of critical readings grants the individual the ability to better understand that William Butler Yeats’ thought was profoundly dialectical and that for every truth he found, he embraced a counter truth. This idea aligns, to a significant extent with my own view, and Yeats makes this particularly evident in ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ and ‘Easter 1916’ through his constant unification of the antithetical elements of the mortal and the immortal existence.

In my opinion, Yeats’ begins to contrast the mortal and immortal existences through his questions about aging and the immortal existence. For instance, he makes evident these antithetical elements in ‘Wild Swans’, by contrasting images of the timelessness of the swans against the persona’s mortal existence. Here his age is aligned with the natural cycle of life through the symbolic images of ‘the trees…in their autumn beauty… under the October twilight’. The time of twilight symbolizes his aging and the end of his life, which ultimately provokes his questioning and envy of the swans and their immortal existence. This alignment with the seasons and the day night dichotomy implies the persona is questioning his existence in...