William Butler Yeats Poems :: poetry, william butler yeats

William Butler Yeats, born in 1865 and died in 1939. Yeats is one of the greatest poets that is well known in the twentieth century. Also a philosophical person, Yeats had genuine his own philosophy which states, Yeats developed a philosophy that united his interest in history, art, personality, and society. His basic insight was that, in all these fields, conflicting forces are at work. In history, for example, as one kind of civilization grows and eventually dies, an opposite kind of civilization is born to take its place. Similarly, human personalities can be delimit as opposites the creative or subjective person versus the active or objective person. (Prentice Hall Literature page 1144 Yeatss Philosophy). With this said, Yeats believed that if you believed there was such a involvement called a soul you would not only live a life of concentric circles, but indeed there would be this thing we call an futurity. Thus, explaining Yeatss Philosophy, meaning that we will be reborn depending on whether or not of you wanted to live life, or as he states it in water travel to Byzantium, live the new life like a monument. Critic Richard Ellmann states, that Yeatss poetry is based on the opposition between the world of change and a world of changelessness. Evidence of this is supported in Yeats poetry, When You Are Old, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swans at Coole, The Second Coming, and finally Sailing to Byzantium. All five of these poems even up change and stability in each poem however, the change can vary among nature and civilization. In the first text, one of Yeatss poem, When You Are Old, demonstrates a change in the physical appearance of civilization. An example is as follows, When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and lento read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep (Prentice Hall Literature page 1140 lines 1-4). When You Are Old, by Yeats, describes how a man once young grew old and illogical his beauty. As described in the text, one thing that changes is the physical appearance of a human beings face. Related to todays society we begin to happen up with cures to embarrass aging, even though we basically drag around a decaying body waiting for our soul to set free, we find ways to prevent everything from sagging and bagging.