The Wild Swans at Coole Essay Questions

What do the swans represent in The Wild Swans at Cole?

On the most basic level, the swans in "The Wild Swans at Coole" represent the vitality of youth and beauty, as life and love "attend upon them still." Their vitality is juxtaposed against a speaker who is growing old and can only remember a time when he "trod with a lighter tread." While the speaker's body is decaying, the swans remain constants in his life; for nineteen autumns he came to gaze upon them, and they serve as a nostalgic reminder of the past.

The swans may also represent the creative act of writing itself, which is able to transcend the physical body. In addition, they may represent the everlasting bittersweetness of true love. By the end of the poem, the narrator acknowledges that he must relinquish his attachment to his love, while acknowledging that it will never truly fade.

How does Yeats view aging and the passage of time in “The Wild Swans at Coole”?

The poem expresses Yeats' views of aging with solemn descriptions of the 'October twilight' and 'wood paths dry,' which craft a melancholy, reflective mood. Autumn is associated with the death of nature and the approach of winter, a season often associated with old age. This setting suggests a process of mourning the passage of time, as well as coming to terms with it, finding peace in the knowledge that some things are eternal. Whereas autumn and stillness represent the inevitability of aging, the swans' immortality and vitality represent Yeats' view that it is possible to escape the ravages of time in some way, perhaps through love, through faith or through the written word.

By what means and with what effects does Yeats set the mood of "The Wild Swans at Coole"?

Yeats creates a romantic and melancholy atmosphere that blends fairy-tale Romanticism with modernism's fractured sense of loss through his use of imagery, assonance, and synecdoche.

Yeats' descriptions of the swans, using phrases like "brilliant creatures," endow the swans with glowing qualities that make them seem like enchanted creatures from an idyllic, magical Ireland. Also, the rhyme scheme of ABCBDD illustrates the symmetrical beauty of nature using rhyming couplets, and gives the poem a serene flow. However, this fairylike mystery contrasts with the speaker's observations of the stillness around him and his descriptions of his own thoughts, which reflect on how much has changed since his vibrant youth.

By existing between these two poles, one enchanted and one very realistic, the poem both captures a Romantic grandeur and acknowledges the inevitability of changing times and the shift into a modern world.

Does the poem mention or imply the existence of real people and places? What do these references contribute to the poem?

Coole Park is a real place in County Galway, Ireland, and it is also the domain of Yeats’ long-time friend and patron, Lady Gregory. Locating the poem at this specific place roots the poem in reality, making it feel more intimate and autobiographical; furthermore, references to Ireland during this time evoke distant echoes of the violent war for independence occurring in the nation, which contrasts and contextualizes the poem's peaceful, reflective interior landscape. In addition, Yeats dedicated the poetry collection that contained "The Wild Swans at Coole" to Lady Gregory's Son, William Robert Gregory, who was killed in World War I. This locates the poem in the poetic landscape of postwar literature, at the juncture between romantic idolatry of nature and the knowledge that the world has become fractured and detached from Romantic values.

Another passing reference to Yeats' life and times is his mention of his sore heart, which critics commonly accept as related to Maud Gonne, the object of the poet’s life-long infatuation. Gonne's ghostly presence in the poem adds to the poem's autobiographical nature and provides a window into what the swans might represent; they could be allegories for Gonne, and the perfection she represented to Yeats which he eventually had to let go of and move on from.

How is this poem characteristic of Yeats’s views of Ireland? Compare and contrast it with some of his other poems.

The idea that ‘all’s changed’—be it the scenery, the speaker's life, or the political climate—appears in many of of Yeats’s poems, including "Easter 1916," in which he states that "all changed, changed utterly." This new, changed world is not described as ideal in either poem; as the oxymoron ‘a terrible beauty’ suggests in the later one, modern Ireland is stained with the blood of martyrs and does not resemble the ideal of Yeats’ imagination. Many of Yeats' other poems delve deeper into his fear of the onslaught of modernity, but "The Wild Swans at Coole" focuses more on his nostalgia for the past.

"The Wild Swans at Coole" is largely a tribute and elegy to Ireland, a common theme for Yeats. In this poem he idealizes his nation's beauty; in "MacDonagh and MacBride and Connolly and Pearse," he memorializes its martyrs. The difference is that the romanticized Ireland of "The Wild Swans at Coole," with its "brilliant" swans and peaceful woodland setting, contrasts with the troubled times described in "Easter 1916." The latter one describes the Easter Uprising and what the narrator considers "too long a sacrifice."

The "mysterious, beautiful" swans and scenery in "The Wild Swans and Coole" depict Ireland as a romantic place that has plenty of beauty and charm. This poem shares the same fairy-tale mood with Yeats's poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." In both, "twilight" and the "midnight" respectively are used as tools for creating a magical, romantic mood where dreams and memories can come alive. In the second poem, this mystical romanticism is further reinforced by the phrases "purple glow" and the "peace…dropping slow" that portray Ireland, once again, as an idyllic place. However, in "The Wild Swans at Coole," nature does not bring ‘peace’ in the same abundance as "The Lake Isle of Innesfree," but it reminds the narrator of his old age and of how his "heart is sore."

How does Yeats use contrasts in "The Wild Swans at Coole"?

"The Wild Swans at Coole" can be separated into two distinct halves—one, a romantic, nostalgic tribute to the beauty of the swans and the glamour of the past, and the other, a solemn elegy on aging and the passage of time, trapped in a tower of lonely reflectivity. This contrast is expressed by polarized phrases like "passion and conquest" and "brilliant creatures / my heart is sore." However, the poem ultimately proposes a way of unifying these contrasts, revealing that Yeats didn't think these opposites were irreconcilable, but rather hoped for a union of the past and future. He sees his own act of writing as a gesture of faith in this unification, and his faith in eternal things. These acts become prisms through which Yeats's memory and longing are refracted into something eternal.