Romantic Elements in Yeats's Poetry

Romantic Elements in Yeats’s Poetry The different attempts that has been made to define romanticism have only added to the confusion that has prevailed about the concept of romanticism. However, there is a broad agreement on a common factor that a romantic writer is dissatisfied with the contemporary values of life and escapes into the golden past or the ideal future. He moves into a fantasy world having the values of life cherished by him. Yeats, on this basis, clearly turns out to be a romantic poet. His dissatisfaction with the modern industrial society and the colonial rule over his country drove him to theme of love and beauty, love of folk - lore, simplicity of life away from the complex modern industrial life and a love of music and vague epithets and phrases. His cyclical view of history had convinced him of the impending violence and anarchy and he sought shelter in courtesy, innocence and ceremony and away from intellection. Like most of the romantics, he is concerned with the problem of life art and death. Like them again, he frequently writes about himself in his poetry. Yeats is connected with the last generation of the romantic poets, the members of the Rhymer's Club and poets and painters of the pre-Raphaelite School. His early writings in particular are coloured by this association. His youthful imagination was nourished on the poetry of Shelley. In his day- dreaming he was apt to pose as Manfred, Prince Athanese and Alastor. The early poetry of Yeats has all the characteristics flavour and limitations of the typical romantic verse. He has a tendency to escape into the land of romance or peaceful bosom of nature, flirtations with lovely phantoms or take the form of superstitions. His Idea to escape into the land of romance may be observed in one of his most popular poems "The Lake Isle of Innisfree". He expresses a keen desire to live in an island where.... I well arese and go now, and go to innisfree. And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattle made. Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee. And live in the bee-loud glade. The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland embodies in finally haunting verse, Yeats's call upon the visionary's heartstrings of the legendary country where is the light that never was on sea or land'. Similarly early poems "The Stolen Child" as the following refrain: Come away, O human child! To the water and the wild . With a faery, hand in hand. For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. One early play from Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire, has the theme of a young woman who is wrapped away to the deathless but inhuman world of the faeries. In The Wanderings of Oision, this legendary Irish hero who has lived 300 years with his bride Niamh in the land of immortals returns only by mishap to find has years fall suddenly on him and condemned to drag out rest of his existence in a Christianized Ireland which has no place for the heroes from Ireland. Love has a significant place in the poetry of Yeats. The poem ‘The Lover Tells of The Rose in His Heart’ is a beautiful, intensely emotional, and romantic poem. The song of Wandering Aengus is a dream of successful love. The short poem He Wishes For The Clothes of Heaven is a supreme cry of his idealized devotion to Maud Gonne. It is marked with an arresting simplicity. The poet here says that if he had the heaven's embroidered clothes, he would spread them under the feet of his beloved. But he has only his dreams to spread under her feet. He asked her to tread softly in his dreams. In the poem 0 do Not Love Too Long, Yeats thinks that he has wasted his time and energy on a barren passion, because Maud Gonne has caused him. He also writes about the revolutionary violence she had preached. In the last two lines of the poem, he equates her with Helen and excused her of everything:- Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn? Maud Gonne got separated from MacBride in 1905. Thereafter he referred to her with sympathy and affection as in the poem Among School Children. He wrote a group of love poems in 1926 under the title A Man Young and Old. These poems represent the "wild regrets for youth and love of an old man”. They combine memories of past emotional intensity with the brutal realism of the age. In another group of love poems ‘A Woman Young and Old’, he places greater emphasis on the physical element of love. The seven Crazy Jane poems and the seven girl- and-lover poems represent diametrically opposite positions. They are song of absolute experience and the songs of totally is solution. As all other romantic poets, Yeats talks of himself in his poetry. His poetry and his biography are inextricably interwoven. Many of his poems are based directly upon actual events in his life. His passion for Maud Gonne has given rise to a large number of poems on Irish political themes and about his love for her, his sufferings at separation from her when she married MacBride, and his affection when she got separated from her husband. His friendship with lady Gregory led to his admiration for aristocratic courtesy. So he wishes his daughter to cultivate in herself courtesy and innocence in the poem. A Prayer for My Daughter: a poem written at the birth of his daughter. The poem in the Memory of Major Roberi Gregory tells us about his uncle Plooexfen, his friends Synge and Lionel Johnson and of course Robert Gregory, the nephew of lady Gregory. In the Municipal Gallery Revisited, he draws the portraits of Lady Gregory. John Synge and some Irish statement. In Coole Park, he celebrates the literary achievement of the Irish Renaissance and Lady Gregory's part in it. In Easter 1916, he presents his reaction to the 1916 rising and refers to Constance Markiewicz. Paatric Pearse, MacDonagh and John MacBride. The theme of art is mainly frequented by romantic poets. Life and Death are also important. Yeats takes up this theme prominently in the poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. Here he faces the problem of old age, of death, of regeneration and gives his decision. He believes that old excludes a man from the sensual joys youth. The world seems to belong completely to the young. It is no place for the old. An old man is hardly a man at all. He is a hollow artifice, A mere effigy of a man“, a tattered coat upon a sticks However, the young too are excluded from certain things. They are absorbed in their sensuality and are completely ignorant of the world of spirit. If the old age frees a man from sensual passion, he may delight in the liberation of the soul. He gains entry into the world of spirit. The realisation of the magnificence of the soul enhances his joy. The soul, however, earns its greatness from the works of art. The poet therefore turns of the great works of art. They are not mere effigies or monuments. They have souls too. These souls live in the noble element of God's fire. They are free from all corruption. Therefore, the poet prays for death, for release from the mortal body. The great works of art have demonstrated the possibility of the soul's existence in some other matter than flesh. Therefore, the poet wishes reincarnation, not in a mortal body. But in immortal and eternal structure of art. He explains himself as one of the last romantics. He successfully bridged the gulf between the romantic tradition of the 19th century and the modern literature which stands in direct and deliberate opposition to that tradition. Chronologically, Yeats was connected with the last generation of the romantic poets. He later emphasised the basic limitations of the art from art's sake cult. He also dwelt on the divided personalities of the young artists of the tragic generation'. He devoted all his efforts advanced in years; he became critical of the theory and practice of the romantics of the 90's. While remaining rooted in the romantic tradition, he firmly and quite effectively tried to broaden and tighten the fabric of romanticism itself. Poetry for him was not a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings but an organized and carefully contrived objectification of it. He was a poet of unified sensibility like Donne. He believed like Eliot that the starting point of a poem may be the poet's personal feeling but the whole mystery of his art is a process of converting it into the emotion of art. The blood must be changed into ink. He is never at the mercy of his passion. He strives with all his mind to hold back the turbid tide of feeling. This led to the theory of mask. Later, it assumed the form of the anti-thesis between to 'self' and the antiself', 'man' and his daimon'. Like a typical romantic poet, he started with personal problems and conflicts and sought to create a general philosophy of life and a historical them from it. .

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