W.B. Yeats Poetry Essay -- W.B. Yeats Poet Poem Essays

W.B. Yeats' Poetry Many literary critics have observed that over the course of W. B. Yeats’ poetic career, readers can perceive a distinct change in the style of his writing. Most notably, he appears to adopt a far more cynical tone in the poems he generated in the later half of his life than in his earlier pastoral works. This somewhat depressing trend is often attributed to the fact that he is simply becoming more conservative and pessimistic in his declining years, but in truth it represents a far more significant change in his life. Throughout Yeats’ career, the poet is constantly trying to determine exactly what inspires him; early on, in such poems as â€Å"The Lake Isle of Innisfree† and â€Å"The Wild Swans at Coole,† Yeats obviously looks towards nature to find his muse, thereby generating idyllic pastoral scenery that is reminiscent of the nature-based poetry of Wordsworth. However, his later works are darkened not by his own perspective, but by the fact that h e is no longer certain that nature is truly the fountain that he taps for inspiration. A number of his later poems, such as â€Å"Leda and the Swan† and â€Å"The Circus Animals’ Desertion,† employ symbolism and metaphor in order to reflect the author’s battle to find his true source. Yeats spends his career dealing with this conflict, and he eventually concludes that while nature itself may have been the source of the general ideas for many of his poems, the works themselves came to life only after he reached into the depths of his heart and sought the fuel of pure human emotions and experiences. Ultimately, he discovers that the only true inspiration comes from the trivial and mundane influences found in everyday life; the purest poetic inspiration is humanity itself. .. ...ho came before him. To accomplish this, he had to determine where to find inspiration beyond, and thereby stronger than, nature. He ultimately realizes that he was looking at this inspiration the entire time without actually seeing it. It does indeed lie â€Å"in the deep heart’s core,† where he finally discovers â€Å"the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.† Primary Sources M.H. Abrams et al, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th ed. NY: Norton, 2000. Pgs. 2092-2120. Secondary Sources Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. â€Å"Principles of the Mind†: Continuity in Yeats’s Poetry. MLN, Vol. 83, No. 6, Comparative Literature. (Dec., 1968). David Ward. Yeats’s Conflicts With His Audience, 1897-1917. ELH, Vol. 49, No. 1. (Spring, 1982). Virginia Pruitt. Return from Byzantium: W.B. Yeats and â€Å"The Tower.† ELH, Vol. 47, No. 1. (Spring, 1980).