“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”
The poem has an original rhyme pattern which really can't be called rhyme. How would you describe it?
Who is the speaker in this poem? How is he similar or different to the lover-poet figure of traditional love poetry? You may find it helpful (or confusing) to know that the original title of “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” was “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” and Yeats laboriously explained in a note that Aedh was a “principle of mind” and that he represented (in magical terms) “fire burning by itself” or (in other, but no less obscure terms) “the myrrh and frankincense that the imagination offers continually before all that it loves”
What is the beloved addressed in this poem like? What images are evoked in the reader by the imaginary spreading of “the cloths of heaven” or the poet's dreams under her feet?
How is the title of the poem reflected in its patterns of repetition?
Yeats is by birth a Protestant poet writing in a predominantly Catholic country (and the woman to whom this poem was addressed was a convert to Roman Catholicism). How is Catholic imagery reflected in this poem?
“The Stolen Child”
Who is the speaker in the poem and to whom it is addressed? Can you think about other texts in European literature on a similar subject?
Stanza 1 - What is the effect of the imagery used to describe the fairies' world? - What is the effect of the alliteration? - How does Yeats create a sense of urgency?
Refrain - What might the `waters' and the `wild' represent? Try to consider symbolically. - What is suggested about the human world here?
Stanza 2 - How does Yeats present the fairies to you? - How is the sense of a supernatural/ other world exaggerated?
Stanza 3 - How does Yeats make the fairies seem more predatory and siren-like? - What might be the significance of the water imagery?
Stanza 4 - How does Yeats create a shift in tone and atmosphere here? - What do you notice about the sounds in this stanza? - How does Yeats create a contrast between the fairy world and the human world?
Final refrain - Note the changes in the refrain : what is the effect? - Is the theft of the child supposed to be a good thing? Does this mean he/she is dead now? What might the loss of the child symbolically represent?
Whole poem - What might the fairies and their world represent?
“When You Are Old”
Who is the poem addressed to? Who is “one man” mentioned in the poem? Why does he deserve a particular recognition in this poem, more than the woman's other admirers?
What do you imagine the book taken down from the shelf to be?
What happens to the poet at the end of the poem? How is it contrasted with the life of his former love?
This is a sonnet by the French Renaissance poet Pierre Ronsard which inspired Yeats. In what respects does Yeats poem differ from Ronsard's poem and why?
When you sit aging under evening's star
By hearth and candle, spinning yarns and wool,
You'll sing my verse in awe and say "Ronsard
Wrought song of me when I was beautiful"
Hearing such words, your serving-maid that night,
Though half-asleep from drudging, all the same
Will wake at my name's sound and stand upright
Hailing the deathless praises of your name.
I'll be a boneless phantom resting sound
Amid the myrtly shades1 far underground.
You, by the hearth, a crone bent low in sorrow
For your proud scorn that willed my love away.
Live now, I beg of you. Wait not the morrow.
Gather the roses of your life today.
"Sailing to Byzantium" (adapted from a guide by Florence Boos)
What sequence of thought is presented in the poem's four stanzas? What is the poem's central metaphor?
Why is the speaker restless in his "country"? What makes him feel out of place in his old age, and what does he seek in compensation?
What qualities does he associate with Byzantium?
To whom and for what does the poet pray? What are his ideals? Why does he wish an artificial rather than natural form, and why do you think he chooses that of the golden nightingale?
What are the special powers of this bird, and of what is he a metaphor? How would he compare to Keats' nightingale?
How is the poem's form useful in embodying its point?
Why do you think this has become one of the century's most famous poems?
"The Second Coming" (adapted from a guide by Florence Boos)
What is the poem's opening image? What are some of its literary or historical connotations? Is it effective in representing the poet's point?
What are some striking features of the poet's language? What does it mean to say, "the ceremony of innocence is drowned"?
What role does the speaker's voice play in his own poem? Is it effective for him to give his direct views and vision?
How are stanza length, diction, sounds and repetition used to create meaning?
What are associations of the "shape with lion body and the head of a man"? What features demonstrate his ominousness?
What may be some answers to the question, "And what rough beast . . . slouches toward Bethlehem"?
What is added by the poem's allusions to the Christian story and to the Apocalypse?
How does the poem convey the inevitability of the new cycle?
What historical events may have prompted the anxiety of this poem?
“Leda and the Swan”
Yeats called the subject of the poem a “violent annunciation”. What is it that this event announces?
Who were the children of the mythological Leda and how are their lives referenced in this poem?
How does Yeats's language reflect the suddenness of Zeus' attack?
How does the description of what is going on between Leda and the swan in the second stanza differ from the first stanza?
The poem is a sonnet - with a difference. How is it different from the traditional sonnet? What happens at the point of “volta”, i.e. at the beginning of line 9?
What question does the author ask in the final lines of the poem and how would you answer it?
General question: Yeats described his early poetic technique in gendered terms. Later, as his technique changed, he denigrated his own early verses as “unmanly,” the “feminine” products of “a womanish introspection”. Can you find what elements of his early poems, such as “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” or “The Stolen Child” he perceived as “unmanly”, as opposed to his later poems, characterized by “more of manful energy”, as Yeats put it?