Thinking Activity- Poem's by W. B. Yeats

This blog is written in response to the Thinking Activity on the Poems of W. B. Yeats, given by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir at the Department of English, MKBU.

Poems by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet, playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre. He was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. His work was greatly influenced by Irish mythology and folklore, and his interest in these areas led him to found the Irish National Theatre Society. He often wrote in a symbolic and mystical style, and his poems showed a deep appreciation of the natural world. His best-known works include "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "The Wild Swans at Coole," and "The Second Coming." He was also a prolific essayist and critic, and wrote several plays, including Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902), and The King's Threshold (1904).

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre 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 born?

The poem ‘The second coming’ is written in black verse and is divided in two stanzas. The poem was written in 1919 and was first published in ‘The Dial’ in 1920. The first stanza contains 8 verses and second contains 14.

In the first stanza the poet describes a world with chaos and that is at the edge of destruction.  “The falcon cannot hear the falconer”, here the poet says that the humans have abandoned the morels and the teaching of god. People have lost the tendency toward violence and anarchy. It is understandable  if we look into the background of the poem.

Probably through this poet discuss the situation of the aftermath of first world war and the Irish war of independence. How humanity saw the world at fire and fighting one another. Also the defeat of Irish rebellion against British rule in the war. There is also a hidden subject that was undiscovered and  that was the Spanish flu. At that time people in Europe were terrorized by the  influenza pandemic that is commonly known as The Spanish Flu. people were worried about their family, spatially about pregnant women because the highest death rate was among the pregnant women. Yeats was also worried about his pregnant wife Georgie Hyde-Lees who caught the flu and almost died. The tension and terror of flu is also is reflected through the poem’s first half.

On the other half of the poem the poet brings the Christian myth of the second birth of Jesus Christ. The myth of the second coming says that Christ will return to the world for the sake of good people who will endure through time and will be faithful to him, he will rescue them and guide them through heaven. 

The poet however is not talking about a kind god rescuing the good people but a beast that has the head of a human and the body of the lion. As the poem indicates that the world has become chaotic and the people have lost control toward violence and safety thus what they have received is not the kind god but as poet says “ pitiless as the sun” a violent beast who will destroy the world and punish the wrong people, that will bring the world toward the Apocalypse. 

The two thousand years the human race have spent in ignorance will end as the beast is marching towards the Bethlehem. The birthplace of Christ will become the place of the second coming, that is probably the beast who will destroy the world.

On Being Asked for a War Poem

I think it better that in times like these

A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth

We have no gift to set a statesman right;

He has had enough of meddling who can please

A young girl in the indolence of her youth,

Or an old man upon a winter’s night. 

This poem contains six lines, with rhyme scheme of ABC, ABC. The first three lines are about what a poet thinks about writing about war and in the other three lines he writes about what the writer's purpose is and where his limits are.

W B Yeats was asked for a war poem by the American novelist Henry James who with Edith Wharton was editing an anthology of war poems, ‘The Book of Homeless’. Yeats wrote a poem but it was not a war poem but an artistic refusal for being asked to write a war poem.

Yeats wrote the poem on 6 February, 1915 with title "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations" but later changed it into  "A Reason for Keeping Silent" before sending it in a letter to James. The poem was first published in Edith Wharton's ‘The Book of the Homeless’ in 1916 as "A Reason for Keeping Silent". Later the poem was  reprinted in ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, that time the title was changed to "On being asked for a War Poem".

In the first three lines Yeats says what a poet should do in such situations. For him a poet should stay away from politics and situations like war as he has less influence than “ statesman” political leaders on the public. Yeats say that poets have “no gift to set a statesman right” , so they better be silent in such happenings like war, that sometimes created by politicians and leaders just to gain some political agendas and fulfil their propaganda. 

In the last three lines Yeats discusses what the role of the poets is. According to him, rather than being political and fulfilling the propaganda of politicians, the poet's main purpose is to please his readers. “Enough of meddling”, through this line the poet wants to say that he does not want to meddle in political propaganda as he has enough of it as he writes for “young girl in the indolence of her youth” and for  “ old man upon a winter’s night”. Through his two examples of “young girl” and “old man” he establishes his view of poet’s concerns that poet should write about ‘Youth and Wisdom”, than political issue.

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