Of all the poets on my Leaving Cert course, WB Yeats is easily my favourite. Although I am at ease in engaging with Yeats themes it is also his unique craft that has an impact on me. Yeats is a poet who uses powerful metaphors and images that have a very memorable quality that, in my view, makes Yeats the most quotable of poets. Finally, the one thing I love about Yeats' poetry is its dynamic quality. Yeats sets up dynamic contrasts in every one of his poems which for me makes his poetry interesting and thought – provoking. I found these traits particularly evident in "September 1913", "Eater 1916", "Lake Isle Of Innisfree", "An Irish airman foresees his death" "The Wild Swans at Coole" and "Swift's Epitaph". .
Yeats cared passionately about his country, and regularly reflected on the state of the nation in his verse. September 1013 is a public poem, political ballad in which Yeats Expresses his disillusionment with the Irish middle classes. Yeats wrote it in response to a particular set of circumstances. He was prompted to express his contempt for the materialism and philistinism. The 1913 Lockout demonstrated the selfishness, mercenary – minded nature of Dublin's merchants, while the rejection of the renowned art collection reflected their lack of respect for cultural and artistic values.
In the opening stanzas Yeats speaks directly to the merchants. His contempt for their grasping miserliness is suggested by the image of scrooge like figures fumbling in 'a greasy till' and 'adding the halfpence to the pence.' The reference to 'shivering prayer' suggests their cowardice. The ruthless merchants have no qualms about exploiting the workers to the point where they have 'dried the marrow from the bone.' Yeats is being ironic when he suggests that men 'men were born to pray and save.
Based on the 1990 Prompt, reworked to apply to W.B. ... W.B. ... However, Yeats was disillusioned at the wide response and misinterpretation of his earlier works, as expressed in this poem to himself, "A Coat". ... Much of his earlier poetry reflected his attachment to his country, and he recounts these works within the lines of this particular poem. ... It is a personal slap in the face to the unnamed "fools". ...
Lawrence will probably remain among the most significant of the century; poets from Thomas Hardy and W.B. ... Above all, poetry was not statement or felt sensation, but 'art'. In 1899, Arthur Symons, one of the poetic 'aesthetes' of the 1890s, published his study The Symbolist Movement in Poetry, which would have great influence on modern poets like W.B. Yeats and T.S. ... Yeats himself quickly drew the lesson that 'We must purify poetry', which was to continue, through movements like Imagism and Vorticism, up to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, the perio...
