Yeats 2

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what is it;

He wishes to escape from such physical suffering, to take his bodily form as a beautiful and enduring work of art, a golden bird. He emphasises the word gold as the chosen substance, both for its beauty, but also for its endurance. His choice of form, a bird, is significant, as it sustains the two images of the bird and singing, and it contrasts with the real birds of the first stanza.

And yet, the poem ends on a note of sensual longing. The bird, as an artistic creation, has it origins in the world of human desires. It too will sing of

What is past, or passing, or to come.

The search for permanence appears to be less than satisfactory. The conflict between Art and Nature, Youth and Old Age, and Body and Soul, remain unresolved.

Art is itself but a reflection of human existence. It is not an end in itself.

Among School Children.

This poem is about man s existence, and the various methods used by man to give meaning to life. Man uses various roles to define himself – lover, philosopher, worshipper, parent. Yeats questions the purpose and necessity of such objects. He asks whether they are not destructive of the very life they claim to give meaning to.

The primary conflict in this poem therefore, is between the Body and the Soul – between the needs and demands of the body, and the fulfilment of the soul. Yeats shows us a world in which the body is sacrificed to the demands of the soul.

In a cleverly constructed poem, Yeats draws us with him into a meditation on the purpose of existence, and the function of the various ideals we use to give meaning to this existence.

He opens his poem in a classroom, where he is fulfilling his duty as a senator of the new state. He plays his part in a matter of fact manner, asks the correct questions, but inwardly is taking note of the children, and of the tasks already laid out for them -already they must

Learn to cipher and to sing,

To study reading-books and histories,

To cut and sew, be neat in everything

In the best modern way .

A formidable list of tasks lie before them.

He is aware of how they must perceive him-

A sixty-year old smiling public man .

But behind his public exterior, lies the contrast with his inner self. The presence of the children reminds him of Maud Gonne, and the passionate love he felt for her. A great wave of emotion sweeps over him.

And thereupon my heart is driven wild

She stands before me as a living child.

But the memory of her brings before him her present gaunt image:

Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind

And took a mess of shadows for its meat.

And age has touched him too, removing his pretty plumage and making him a kind of old scarecrow .

So, the first, personal and subjective section of the poem introduces the themes of youth and age, of the discipline and effort encountered in early childhood, of religion – (the nun),of philosophy, of love and passion, and the passing of youth and beauty, and the effects of ageing.

The second – universal and speculative- section broadens the of application of these elements to consider the part they play in mankind s efforts to give meaning and purpose to life. He questions the whole nature of existence.

We meet the child again – this time as an infant, a shape . Yeats questions whether the youthful mother would consider the labour involved in having a child would be considered worth it if she could see that child as a sixty year old man.

Next, he considers the philosophers, first encountered in the theories of Plato, in the first section. He touches on the various theories they developed to explain the puppies of life. Plato sees nature, or reality as we know it, as a mist, half revealing, half concealing things, so that all we see is a ghostly imitation of the reality behind it all. Aristotle is described as solider, meaning more down to earth. Finally, he considers Pythagoras, who was thought to be divine by man of his followers. He was renowned for his discoveries about the relationship between numbers and music. His approach was to seek truth through Art. Yet, for all their theories, they too grew old and became scarecrows. Yeats dismisses their efforts, as they too had no answers to man s ageing.

He then unites the images of mothers and nuns, as those who worship images , but although the mother worships her living children, and the nun worships inanimate statues, they both lead to the same betrayal – both of these fail to realise the expectations and hopes invested in them. They too cause misery and suffering. They both break hearts . To Yeats, these are symbols of all objects used by man to give meaning to his existence.

Yeats appears to be arguing that man spends his life sacrificing himself in the cause of ideals – whether that of the lover sacrificing himself for the object of his passion, or the mother for her child, or the nun for her religion, or the student battling for wisdom, at the expense of the body- blear eyed wisdom out of midnight oil .

In the final stanza, Yeats questions whether this should be so. He uses two powerful images of unity and harmony – the chestnut tree, and the dancer, to suggest that man should not sacrifice one element of being , to enhance the other. No one aspect of life summarises life. Instead, man should be the sum of all his parts , But he gives no definite statement – he merely questions –

How can we know the dancer from the dance .

He appears to be saying that there is no answer to life, or the living of it. Attempts to impose order or meaning on life are doomed to failure. The only truth in life is the living of it.

Circus Animal s Desertion.

This poem deals with the conflict between man and artist. Yeats opens with a situation where he is labouring for inspiration – |

I sought a theme, and sought for it in vain.

But his inspiration has at last failed him, having been with him a lifetime

Winter and summer till old age began .

He then looks back upon his life s work, and considers what he created.

He is, however, dismissive about his themes, categorising them in the witty metaphor as Circus animals – that is, artificial, stylised, unnatural creations with himself as Ring master, putting them through their paces.

He then embarks on a list of these themes. He claims that the initial inspiration for his writing came from his doomed passion for Maud Gonne –

Themes of the embittered heart . This would seem to imply that he took refuge initially in Art in order to sublimate his unrequited passion for her. But there is a qualification of this on his part – Or so it seems . Even then, he appears to suggest, Art may have meant more to him than life.

But, however it began, art came increasingly to dominate his life –

A counter-truth filled out its play .

As Maud Gonne was increasingly lost to him, in her Fanaticism and hate , so he in turn was lost to art –

And this brought forth a dream and soon enough

This dream itself had all my thought and love.

Although what he wrote of,

“The Fool and Blind Man stole the bread

were Heart mysteries -that is, having their origins in human emotions, he sacrificed the man to the artist:

Players and painted stage took all my love,

And not those things that they were emblems of”.

The joy of creation increasingly absorbed him, not the living of life.

Character isolated by a deed

To engross the present and dominate memory.

These images were masterful – under the Ringmaster s control. And they grew in pure mind -increasingly they were the product of his intellect, not his emotions. But now they have gone – they ve deserted him, or perhaps he has deserted them, seeing them in all their artificiality. So he is left with no option but to return to what he has avoided – the world of feeling, of emotion. His ladder out of that tangled world of human emotion, has gone. He s left at the bottom of the ladder, with his feet on the ground. He uses the powerful metaphor of litter –

old kettles, old bones, old rags

to suggest the ugliness of human feeling. But, he must confront the reality of life and living at last – he must return to the source of all art, the world of human emotion-

The foul rag and boneshop of the heart .