The Wild Swans at Coole, by W.B. Yeats

THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE

W B Yeats

Yeats' poem “The Wild Swans at Coole” is set in Coole Park in County Galway, Ireland, where Yeats loved to spend time. It is autumn, and the trees look beautiful, but autumn of course is a season of decay. The time of day is 'twilight', so the light is fading and the day is drawing to a close. There is an air of tranquillity at first as the lake reflects 'a still sky'. The first stanza ends, however, with the announcement that there are fifty-nine swans on the water. Yeats states this number as 'nine and fifty', and the fact that the nine comes first emphasises that this is an odd number. One of the swans is alone, without a mate.

Yeats opens the second stanza by stating that it is nineteen years since he first counted the swans at Coole, but we don't know how old he was at the time. He can remember that while he was counting he saw the swans take flight all at once and then split up, 'wheeling in great broken rings'. The noise of their wings must have been almost deafening; Yeats describes it as 'clamourous'. It was an experience that obviously remained with him, striking as it was.

Yeats had great admiration for the swans, describing them in the opening line of the third stanza as 'brilliant creatures'. In the following line, however, he turns to his own feelings: 'my heart is sore'. He is remembering a sight he first saw when he was much younger, and this makes him acutely aware that he is ageing. He refers again to the noise of the swans' wings, this time using alliteration in the phrase 'bell-beat'. Yeats closes the third stanza with the statement that he 'Trod with a lighter tread' when he first heard the sound, implying that he was younger and more carefree or joyful then.

Yeats opens the fourth stanza by describing the swans as 'Unwearied', contrasting the fact that they do not tire with the reference to his own ageing. The swans are 'lover by lover', flying in pairs. Yeats uses alliteration to describe the movement of the swans, this time with the hard 'c' sound in 'cold / Companionable streams or climb the air'. 'Their hearts have not grown old' forms another strong contrast with the line 'And now my heart is sore' of the previous stanza. A softer alliteration features in the phrase 'wander where they will', conveying a sense of the swans' freedom. Their vivacity and energy are alluded to as Yeats says that they still seek 'passion and conquest'. The implication once again is that the poet has aged and is no longer young enough for a new love affair. (In actual fact Yeats married after this poem was composed.)

The two opening lines of the final stanza echo the mood and setting of the first stanza, describing the swans as 'Mysterious, beautiful' on the calm water of the lake. In the last four lines of “The Wild Swans at Coole”, Yeats faces the fact that the swans will not be there forever. They will build nests in another place for the winter, and they will give pleasure to other people who will see them beside a 'lake's edge or pool'. Yeats will 'awake some day' to find that they have gone. The poem ends with this air of sadness, which could be symbolic of the transitory nature of a love affair.

The poem is set in five stanzas of six lines each; the lines are of varying length, but long and short tend to alternate. The rhyme scheme is ABCBDD, although 'stones' and 'swans' in the fifth and sixth lines of the first stanza are really just a half rhyme. Yeats uses a combination of end-stopped lines and enjambment within each stanza; the enjambment allows one line to flow into the next and extend the image. In the second stanza this device is used over the last three lines where Yeats describes the powerful effect that the sight and sound of the swans flying up had on him.

“The Wild Swans at Coole” is an evocative poem in which Yeats uses a setting and the memory of an experience, now being re-lived, to express his awareness of the ageing process. The season of autumn and the time of twilight symbolise this process, as nature dies away and light fades. The beauty and power of the swans create a contrast that Yeats experiences through sight and sound. They have not aged or lost their 'passion' for life and love. Yeats is aware, however, that youth slips away and his heart becomes heavy, knowing that ageing is inevitable and that change has to be confronted.

Here is the full text of “The Wild Swans at Coole”

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me

Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

Upon their clamourous wings.

I have looked upon these brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold,

Companionable streams or climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

First published on helium.com

Cold Knap Lake - Gillian Clarke

Gillian Clarke's poem 'Cold Knap Lake' centres around a childhood memory of a girl almost drowning in a lake in Glamorgan (South Wales). The poet, with her parents, 'watched a crowd' of people pull the girl out of the water. It seemed at first that they were too late: the girl's lips were blue and she 'lay for dead'. The metaphor 'dressed in water's long green silk' tells us that she was covered in weeds from the lake.

In the second stanza, Clarke describes her mother as a 'heroine' as she knelt down to resuscitate the girl. The act of kneeling, 'her red head bowed', perhaps suggests a religious act. The mother seems to have been part of the whole rescue operation, 'her wartime cotton frock soaked'. The mention of her red hair is in sharp contrast to the girl's blue lips and gives a feeling of life. Clarke was obviously struck by the idea of her mother reviving 'a stranger's child' with 'her breath'. The crowd of onlookers dare not speak but are compelled to watch, as Clarke tells us in the alliterative phrase 'drawn by the dread of it'.

The third stanza tells us that the girl began breathing; 'bleating' suggests the idea of a baby animal calling for its mother. She is now 'rosy in my mother's hands', the color assuring that she is alive. The poet's father took the girl back to her home; we are told that she came from a poor family. Rather than expressing gratitude for the fact that she survived, her parents 'thrashed' her for having got herself into such danger.

The question 'Was I there?' that opens the fourth stanza signals a change in the poem. It stands out, as it is the shortest line in the entire poem and comes at the beginning of a stanza. It suggests that the poet, now of course an adult, is unsure as to whether she actually saw the girl being beaten or whether this is something her father told her about. The following five lines of the stanza form one long question that centres around an extended metaphor where the waters of the lake represent the memory. This second question refers to the 'troubled surface' of both the mind and the water. The imagery here is rich, from the alliteration of 'surface something else/shadowy' continuing with the personification of the 'dipped fingers of willows', which links back to the fingers of the child in the water. The 'satiny mud blooms' of line 18 are reminiscent of 'water's long green silk' in the first stanza. The 'cloudiness' of the muddy water is a symbol of the haziness of our memories. The assonance in the phrase 'treading heavy webs' in the following line creates a vivid image where it is the webbed feet of swans that are disturbing the water, just as certain events provoke unclear thoughts about the past in our minds. The stanza and the extended question close with the evocative sounds of the swans' wings that 'beat and whistle'.

The poem ends with a pair of rhyming couplets:

'All lost things lie under closing water

in that lake with the poor man's daughter.'

'Lost things' suggests memories that we can no longer recall, buried deep in our minds. The final line connects back to the initial focus of the poem, the girl who almost drowned. Alliteration of 'All lost things lie ... in that lake' serves to tie together the ideas of the memory and the drowning incident. 'Water' and 'daughter' are in fact the only rhyming words that appear in successive lines in the entire poem. In the first stanza, we could consider 'lake' and 'silk' (lines 3 and 4) as a half rhyme. Stanza two has 'earth' at the end of the opening line and 'breath' at the end of the fourth line, another half rhyme. The third stanza's first line ends with 'bleating' and its last line with 'drowning'. The fourth stanza does have two rhyming words, 'there' and 'air', one at the end of its first line and the other at the end of its last line, and each is the final word in a question.

The pattern of the stanzas is an interesting one, as the first and third stanzas have four lines each and the second and fourth six lines each, with the rhyming couplets standing out at the end of the poem. The lines vary in length, with the shortest one, 'Was I there?', drawing attention at the start of the fourth stanza.

In 'Cold Knap Lake', Gillian Clarke has created a fascinating poem that seems to focus on one particular dramatic event she witnessed in her childhood but develops into an expression of how our memories of the past are a part of us that may fade or play tricks on us with the passage of time.