All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head
Here, the speaker acknowledges the fact that time has passed and many things have changed since the first time he came to the lake. However, what has changed is not the lake nor the swans, but rather human society. The swans remained the same, trapped in eternity, while the poet and the society around him changed.
In this quote the speaker presents us with two worlds—an eternal one, beautiful, unchanged, trapped forever in a time capsule where pain and aging have no power—and a mortal world, full with pain and sorrow, where the poet and every other human being lives.
“I saw before I had well finished, All suddenly mount / And scatter wheeling in great broken rings / Upon their clamorous wings”
This quote expresses Yeats’ observation that sometimes, no matter how much we want to hold onto things or control them, they must go away. He remembers trying to count the swans, but before he could finish, they flew away in a fashion that was chaotic and wild, breaking the stillness of the lake. Even the circles they fly in are broken, representing the fact that nature and life itself sometimes evade even the best calculations and human attempts to find order and meaning. Before we can finish what we intend to do, life and nature inevitably veer off on their own course, this quote seems to say, regardless of our technology and knowledge.
Passion or conquest, wander where they will / Attend upon them still
Passion and conquest are two opposing forces that Yeats sees as comprising the eternal creative force that he sees within the swans. While passion entails desire and pursuit, conquest is its achievement and conclusion. Together, they make up a shorthand for the numerous contrasts (life and death, youth and old age, mortality and immortality, body and soul, freedom and control) that comprise all of life.
Yeats believed that some sort of tension and contrast was necessary for progress and growth. Though he knows that his own time for growth is passing, this poem expresses his knowledge that the swans will always be there to inspire someone with their beauty and peaceful acceptance of life’s duality and its complex, ephemeral nature.
Among what rushes will they build, By what lake’s edge or pool / Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day / To find they have flown away?
This quote is an example of Yeats’ conflicted, bittersweet realization that the swans (and whatever they represent—be it love, creativity, or some sort of divine spirit) are everlasting: just not for him, a mortal human. He wonders what other lakes or shores will host their nests, and he wonders what other men will be inspired by them. He knows that someday the swans will leave for good, just as someday his life will end for good, but he knows that their beauty and significance will not be lost—it will just be transformed.
