The Wild Swans at Coole.

The Wild Swans at Coole

In The Wild Swans at Coole, Yeats recreates a moment of inspiration and awe that he experienced in his youth. He is adept at recalling the feel of that particular evening and the ‘October twilight’. He includes details of the trees and woodland paths as if retracing his steps in his memory. The image of the stillness of the ‘brimming water’ and the sky mirrored in it is particularly effective. The stillness is contrasted with the sudden movement and breaking of the breathless serenity as the swans ‘suddenly mount and scatter wheeling’. The swans are ‘wild’ and have that untamed beauty and freedom that resists the poet’s attempts to capture them in his mind’s eye. The ‘broken rings’ that the birds form contrasts with the symmetry of the mirrored sky. They embody a kind of natural power and strength. The poet recalls the sound of their wings as being ‘clamorous’ against the background of stillness with the unexpected metaphor of the ‘bell-beat’. This suggests not foreboding but something joyful and uplifting, a celebration of beauty and freedom, perhaps. Or it emphasises the majestic quality of the birds. His ‘lighter tread’ displays the sense of delight and inspiration that he feels.

The ‘brilliant creatures’ possess the kind of beauty that is almost wounding to the poet’s artistic sensibilities; his ‘heart is sore’ with nostalgia and a kind of love-sickness. Yeats strikes a chord of a sense of loss or fear of loss and of change that forms an undercurrent to the latter stanzas of the poem. Perhaps it is his feeling that such perfect beauty cannot remain forever in a world where ‘all’s changed’.

The swan as a symbol of enduring love is an ancient one and Yeats describes them as being ‘lover by lover’ in the ‘companionable streams’. He reflects ...

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The swan as a symbol of enduring love is an ancient one and Yeats describes them as being ‘lover by lover’ in the ‘companionable streams’. He reflects this further in the line ‘their hearts have not grown old’. Not like the poet’s own? Yeats acknowledges the passing of nineteen autumns earlier in the poem and draws comfort from the seemingly unchangeable qualities of the swans. Notice that the streams are ‘cold’; they would be in Ireland in October, but maybe he admires the ‘companionable’ swans for their endurance and perseverance. The ‘brilliant’ creatures embody a vital spark of ‘passion’ and ‘conquest’ that will not fade in intensity over time. Other poems in the collection emphasise the centrality of change in the passage of time but for Yeats the swans occupy a fixed point in the flow. They possess an attendant ‘passion’ and a spirit of adventure suggested in the enigmatic and evocative word ‘conquest’. They have the freedom to ‘wander where they will’. Perhaps, by implication, the poet acknowledges the tendency in life for artistic freedom to become restricted and for passion to cool as time passes.

The other-worldliness of the swans in sustained to the final stanza. They ‘drift’ eerily ‘mysterious’ and at the same time ‘beautiful’. If the swans are a symbol of the artistic spirit, then Yeats may be expressing his feelings about the elusive and intangible nature of inspiration. In the final lines, the poet expresses doubt for the first time. He seems to expect to find that the swans will ‘have flown away’ one day and he will be left without the feelings of delight that they instil in him. Other ‘men’s eyes’ will enjoy their beauty and experience their exhilarating presence. The poem ends with a question, which suggests that the poet is pondering not only what will happen in the future, but also how he will feel. The future doubts do not seem to lessen the feeling that this poem is a celebration of the wild power and beauty that the swans symbolise and the creative sense of awe that they inspire.

DAL May 2001