The W B Yeats Poems English Literature Essay

Yeats illustrates in the poem The Second Coming, his ability to focus on the recurring historical system by showing the imminent chaos and the awareness of the misfortune concerning human nature. He is able to depict a miserable world where mayhem reigns supreme over the purity of man. These same themes are found in Among School Children, and it illustrates the examination for an explanation for life. The contemplation that Yeats creates in the course of these two poems enlightens the reader of the metaphysical contemplation that represents and is familiar in all of his work.

Throughout The Second Coming, Yeats gives you an idea about a widespread change transformation in the human way of life, the commencement of a new age as his historical technique fluctuates with regard to a different course. Yeasts current world is about Christianity, in The Second Coming, he is foretelling us about a world full of an ominous anarchy. Representational indication to Yeats views are symbolize from the commencement of the poem in the shape of an image of a gyre, “Turning and Turning the widening gyre”, this image continues to reoccurs throughout the poem presenting the phases of life, and in addition he depicts the volatility of the widening gyre whose ” Centre cannot hold”.

Yeats wants to bring attention to the escalating evil in the world, he does not choose to pin point any specific group or maybe he is not able to, it seems like the blame is spread evenly over the whole of society. This way of thinking does not seem out of place in the aftermath of World War 1 “Blood dimmed tide is loosed, everywhere” in the next line Yeats describes the post war era as “The Ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

The world looks like it is almost near a spiritual awakening; “Surely the Second Coming is at hand.” And soon as you move past this rare bit of enlightened belief of hope, Yeats throws you bank into the word of despair with the troubled lines “When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi,    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.”

he poem Among School Children was written when Yeats was 60 years old, expresses his thoughts about his life, establishing a sense of remorse while he reminisced. This reflection sustains the statement “Life’s achievement often fall short of expectations”. The forlorn questioning that depiction of Yeats at the start of the poem establishes a point of view of sorrow and disillusionment. Yeats is questioning life’s very location.

Throughout the poem there is continued reference to a swan, it seems to be a original figure of a mother. This theme is give emphasis to the line: For even daughters of the swan can shire, something of every paddler’s heritage” this refers to the almost god like characteristics of the sullen child.

The continual use of Historical references in his works, reveal a ancient wisdom of significance to the poem, in the line “Did Quattroccento finger fashion it” this line links the poem to the Fiftieth century and the northern renaissance art. The image of a finger in that line can imply a god like image descending from above. In the final lines of the poem Yeats revisit the aged matured and cyclical views of Yeats, this is in a very different divergence from her juvenile reflections at the commencement of the poem.

The school children differ from other of Yeats poems. In this poem there is evidence of a civility, a functioning society. That a world moving towards modernity and advancement that is not leading to its downfall. In other words this is one of Yeats poems that are not prophesying a world filled with anarchy and despair.

The Second Coming use of strikingly brutal imagery and shocking ritualistic expressions, this poem is one of Yeats best know works. His blasphemous imagery of a beast raging fourth as the second coming is quite frightening. Even though Yeats prophecy has not come true, it shows the slopping path that society is currently on and sadly his prophecy still could come true, maybe not a sphinx but a beast all the same. In Among School Children innocently create fictitious descriptions of what it is to be human, in many cases creating a sense of false hope. In this poem Yeats talks about the future and that there is no point living in the past, we as a society should envisage the abundance of each instant as having a complex accord with all that surround us. Both of these unique poems have similar meanings, they are both a glimpse of what society is and or could be. They are both warnings as such, to everything in our power to avoid the downfall of mankind by either allowing evil to take hold and turn the world into an anarchists paradise or by living in the past and forgetting about what is to come.