W.B Yeast :Poem Analysis

                    William Butler Yeast 

        William Butler Yeats[a] (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish literary establishment who helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

       He was a Symbolist poet, using allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. W.B Yeast got noble prize in literature 1923 was awarded to William Butler Yeats "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."

Thinking Activity 

1)Critical analysis of W.B Yeast poem' The Stolen Child '.

This is  one of his most famous poem, 'The Stolen Child'. Its major theme is the loss of innocence as a child grows up. Written in 1886 when Yeats was just 21, 'The Stolen Child' is one of his works that is strongly rooted in Irish mythology.

 The Stolen Child, is of four stanzas. Nature and the land of fairies present images of freedom throughout the first three stanzas. The first three stanzas of the poem The Stolen Child has Celtic references . Celtic legend often offers a myth about fairies stealing a child and replacing it with a changeling. Yeats uses this myth in his poem, The Stolen Child. He uses this myth to show his desire to return innocence to society. The poet uses the island’s image to symbolize the separation of the real world and the freedom that it creates for the fairies. “There lies a leafy island” refers to a place far away from the world of pain, which is the real world in which we dwell. The ‘wild’ represent the unrestricted life led by the fairies.

On the other hand, the poet has used repetend in The Stolen Child. There is a repetend at the end of each stanza .There is also a contrast in the repetend in the poem. The human world is full of joys and sorrows, and tears and laughter.

W.B Yeast has used vivid imagery in the poem. In the end of the poem  the child goes to the island with the fairies. The child looks serious. The fairies say that the child will no longer hear the sound of the calves on the hillside or the sound of the kettle over the fire that gives him warmth.

2)Pandemic Reading of poem' The Second Coming '.

Poem 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

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   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be 

Pandemic Reading of Poem The Second Coming 

We can say that the poem was written 1919

So we can connect this poem with influenza  flu  Yeats  wife Georgie Hyde-Lees caught the virus and was very close to death. The highest death rates of the pandemic were among pregnant women, in some areas, they had up to a 70 percent death rate. While his wife was recovering from illness, he wrote "The Second Coming".

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

This lines symbolizes the pandemic situation of influenza flu blood were flowing from nose ,ears it seems like the blood is indicating influenza .The ceremony of innocence indicates people dying of influenza flu and we can also connect with  Corona pandemic. 

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

We can connect this lines with Corona pandemic that it was out of control there was scarcity of doctors and ventilators and even oxygen cylinders situation was out of control. So connect this lines the center cannot hold.