Reoccurring themes in Yeats works What are their importance? And, How is each theme portrayed?

Time is a big theme in Yeats works Often Time is portrayed negatively and seems to be the real enemy, like in Broken Dreams and In the Memory of Eva GoreBooth and Constance... In Yeats later works it seems he is both obsessed and frustrated with time

There is grey in your hair Mauds beauty withered with time But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed Maud was once beautiful in her youth, Maud may have lost some of her appeal; but Yeats looks forward to the afterlife when her former beauty will be restored (which is quite fickle). It seems here beauty is only in the eye of the beholder The enjambment in the poem also reflects time as Yeats uses this technique to reminisce about the past when Maud was in her prime Here time has stolen Maud of her youth and beauty which has changed some of Yeats feelings for her

Blossom from the summers wreath as from the first four lines, the girls were clearly beautiful in their youth but here Yeats is saying that time has stripped them for their beauty as they are now When withered old and skeleton-gaunt Dear shadows shadows of the past, past memories Have no enemy but time time is the true enemy here As in Broken Dreams, time seems to have a damaging effect on the girls beauty as it has withered them. However time is not so bad as at the start of the poem Yeats is reminiscing about the old Georgian mansion, where he himself spent a lot of time at: The light of evening, Lissadell/ Great windows open to the south

Vanished and left but memories, that should be out of season/With the hot blood of youth.. here Yeats could be looking back on his youth, these memories are however ambiguous as we dont know whether these are good memories or if he is reflecting on his mistakes

Under the October twilight the water/ Mirrors a still sky;-nature seems to be harmonious; but also here we are reminded by the sky that with time and the change of seasons that the sky changes too The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me in great broken rings- time and its continuous cycle, time is something greater than us humans: destiny, the bigger picture The structure itself almost mimics time as each stanza in the poem seems to reflect a different part of the year/season. However, time has only left Yeats lonely and deep in reflection

Did that play of mine send out/ Certain men the English shot? Did words of mine put too great strain/ On that womans reeling brain? Could my spoken words have checked/ That whereby a house lay wrecked? Yeats here is reflecting back on his life, doubting himself, wondering if he did the right thing Again, a reoccurring thought of Yeats, with time comes damage as we see by the third quote as it refers to the destruction of Coole Park and Lady Gregorys mansion

The Cat and the Moon The moonlight shines on the cat making the cat magnificent, complimenting the cat as Yeats works as the moon (Maud) is the muse behind Yeats works The Wild Swans at Coole Under the October twilight the water/ Mirrors a still sky; Unwearied still, lover by lover, Here nature is harmonious as the water is still and the swans are sat side by side The Man and the Echo In contrast to The Wild Swans at Coole Nature here is volatile and destructive, even to an extent random and pointless Up there some hawk or owl has struck, Dropping out of sky or rock, A stricken rabbit is crying out, And its cry distracts my thought

Sailing to Byzantium Nature here is presented to be harmonious the young in one anothers arms, birds in the trees Yeats seems bitter as they have each other and their looks, Yeats again is wallowing in selfpity The Stolen Child wandering water gushes the waters and the wild idea of being free and in touch with nature

Yeats uses opposites to emphasis his main points in his poems In The Cold Heaven opposites are used to re-enforce that some relationships/concepts cannot work as they are so different Opposites in The Fisherman, are used to contrast the past, which Yeats clings so tightly to, and the modern world which Yeats despises. Art can no longer survive in a hedonistic world where all that matters is procession and pleasure In The Cat and the Moon, the use of binary opposites show how distant the cat and the moon are emotionally and physically. No matter how hard the cat (Yeats) tries he could never have the moon (Maud) , the two are so different maybe it was never meant to be...

Broken Dreams But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed Here Yeats looks forward to the afterlife when he will be reunited with Maud, and her former beauty has been restored The Cold Heaven rook-delighting an omen of death; Yeats is not sure if the afterlife is a good or bad thing as it is uncertain what awaits him A death-delighting heaven which is a very unlikely combination when we think of the two Riddled with light-this is used to represent the body dying

The Man and the Echo Echo. Lay down and die. is death the only way out? What do we know but that we face/ One another in this place? here, like in The Cold Heaven, Yeats is questioning what is there after death and if there is a Heaven The Second Coming The blood dimmed tide is loose here it is referencing Revelation 17:3-6 which says that the beast will come as a predecessor to the second coming of Christ. The poem ends with a rhetorical question leaving our fates in the balance of life and death

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death The tight structure creates an echo effect as if the airman is certain to die I KNOW that I shall meet my fate/ Somewhere among the clouds above;-here there is a sense of that the airman is destined to die In balance with this life, this death the airmans life in the hands of fate waste of breath is there no way to stop this from happening? A lonely impulse of delight this phrase itself is ambiguous; however it could be interoperated as the airman taking pleasure in killing/death Sailing to Byzantium Yeats paints a negative self-portrait, he is bitter about his own ageing and decay therefore he reduces himself to a tattered coat upon a stick An aged man is but a paltry thing

The Fisherman The freckled man who goes/ To a gray place on a hill/ In gray Connemara clothes/ At dawn to cast his flies here we have an idealistic picture of a rural Ireland where men work hard doing physical tasks Yeats longs for an ideal audience who appreciate art and are just as intelligent as himself The use of opposites emphasises that the old world (a world long past) and the modern world do not mix as they are so different as cold/ And passionate as the dawn The Man and the Echo In a cleft that's christened Alt-this is a reference to a hill in Ireland that is supposed to a burial ground for Celtics, Yeats was very interested in Irish Mythology and probably dreamt/imagined himself in a such time

In Sailing to Byzantium Yeats feels he no longer belongs in Ireland as it has changed so much from what he knows that is not a country for old men