Question: Trace the romantic elements of Yeats poetry.
Introduction
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) is the most puissant poet of modern English literature but he has another designation that he is a romantic poet. His poetry is soaked in the Romantic tradition. The early period of his poetry known as “Celtic Twilight” is marked by subjectivity, high imagination, romantic melancholy, escapism, and romantic interest in myth and folklore. On one occasion, Yeats characterized himself as one of “the last Romantics”.
High imagination and escapism
According to a critic Charles Harold Herford, Romanticism is “an extra-ordinary development of imaginative sensibility”. Yeats’s poetry blazons the romantic quality of high imagination and escapism. In the poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” of the collection of poems” The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics”, (1892), Yeats reveals his desiderate to escape away from the hectic town life to the remote island of Innisfree. He would like to build a small cabin of clay and wattles and produce his daily necessities with his own hands. He also wants to be entertained by the sweet music of birds and insects. He thinks the rhythm of nature will lull him into a peaceful sleep. This desire to go in contact with nature is so forceful in him that he can see the place in his imagination. In his mind’s eye, he visualizes the gentle movement of lake water. It is in the poet’s tongue:
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
The above quotation is evidence of the Romantic longing of the poet to discard city life in favor of life around nature. Besides, the language of this poem is decorative and musical which conforms to the notion of romantic poetry.
Subjectivity
Many of Yeats’s poems take the subjective matter from his personal life. “A Prayer for my Daughter” of the collection of poetry “Michael Robartes and the Dancer” and “Among the School Children” are examples of such types of poems. In the first poem, Yeats displays his homage to the aristocratic notion of tradition and custom. The poet wants for her daughter a husband whose family would respect traditional custom.
“How but in custom and tradition
Are innocence and beauty born”?
The words like beauty, ceremony, and innocence have a romantic undertone. “Among the School Children” exemplifies Yeats’ nostalgia for childhood.
Again in “Easter 1916”, his sense of nationalism and patriotic fervor is evident. indirectly he also mentions his romantic love for Maud Gonne. Poet’s veneration for Irish National Leaders is untold here in this poem. He asserts that their sacrifice has given meaning to their lives and as a result, a terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The personal notion about history and civilization
Yeats puts forward his personal notion about history and civilization in a symbolic term like William Blake. Thus in “The Second Coming”, the poet writes:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
Here the poet expresses his idea of decay and destruction of civilization. He believes in the cyclic order of history which is symbolized by the image of ‘gyre’. The idea of disintegration is symbolized by ‘falcon’. The poem shows that Yeats symbols are very often of personal nature like William Blake.
Romantic search for a spiritual home
Yeats had a romantic quest for a spiritual home. In “Sailing to Byzantium” of the collection of poetry “The Tower”, 1928, he deals with the clash between physicality and spirituality.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
The old men are excluded from physical enjoyment and they are like “A tattered coat upon a stick”. Nonetheless, they have the special power to penetrate the soul. This is why the poet has sailed to the holy city of Byzantium which is the cultivation of spirituality. In the poem and in many other poems, a sense of romantic melancholy pervades.
Other elements of romanticism
Besides, Yeats’ poetry abounds in classical myth, romantic themes, and love for nature which make him out and out one of the last romantics.
Conclusion
Yeats’ romanticism is not less than pure Romantics. Rather he is a genius for his versatile perspectives of writing capacity. The significance of romanticism in the history of English poetry is enhanced once more through him.
