The Wild Swans at Coole | W. B Yeats | significance of ‘Swans’

The Wild Swans at Coole | W.B. Yeats | Significance of 'Swans'

Q. Bring out the significance of ‘Swans’ in the poem, “The Wild Swans at Coole”

Answer: W. B Yeats was one of the major writers in the late 19th and early 20th century’s cultural movement of Ireland. It is popularly known as Irish Literary Revival. His poem, “The Wild Swans at Coole” is a remarkable literary composition ever written by him. It was written in the year, 1916.

In this poem, the poet described swans at Coole Park. This place was very significant to Yeats both personally and symbolically. It was a place where the poet had previously visited and marveled at the sight of 59 swans on the lake.

These swans are presented very wild and free. They are moving effortlessly across the water. Yeats reflects on how things have changed than before. The swans, though still present, have grown older. So also Yeats himself has aged as well.

In W.B. Yeats' poem "The Wild Swans at Coole", the swans play a significant symbolic importance. They represent various themes such as beauty, transience, permanence, and the passage of time. These themes are the major themes in the poem. They raise an emotional and thematic depth. Their symbolic role is depicted minutely in the poem.

The swans in the poem symbolize the passage of time. However, time causes the inevitable changes in our life. Yeats contrasts the ageless and graceful beauty of the swans with his own sense of aging and personal loss. The swans remain constant in their wildness and beauty.

Yeats feels a deep sense of change in his own life. Particularly, he feels the changes regarding his age. He is chastened by his unfulfilled desires. He feels himself quite distant from the youthful vitality that he once experienced. The swans, in their unchanging nature, highlight the contrast between the permanence of nature and the fleeting nature of human life.

The swans represent the eternal and timeless aspects of nature. Their presence contrasts to the human experiences of decay, de-vitalization and death. They represent a sense of continuity and constancy in the natural world. Yeats notes that the swans' ability to glide gracefully on the water serves as a reminder of the unchanging rhythms of nature. Though, human life is, undoubtedly, transient.

The swans, the poet knows very well, are wild and untamed. They are symbolized as an image of ideal beauty and perfection. Yeats admires them for their freedom, grace, and harmony. He often regrets that he himself feels disconnected from such qualities like that of the swans. He reflects on his own life's imperfections. The swans, then, serve as a kind of unattainable ideal that Yeats longs for.

The swans are the symbol of loss and regret of the poet’s artistic creativity. Their wildness and freedom raises his dormant aspiration of his youth. The poet also wants to expose his artistic creativity like the vitality of his youth life when he often visited in the Coole Park. The swans thus exist in a more perfect and eternal state. They remind Yeats of his inability to recover the enthusiasm of his earlier years.

On the other hand, the swans can also be seen as a reflection of Yeats' personal feelings of unrequited love and unfulfilled dreams. He was once on the relationship with Maud Gonne. But with their misunderstanding their relationship had gone apart. Still, Yeats had a lifelong love with Gonne. But his love was never fully realized. The swans, in their unattainable beauty and freedom, mirror the poet's own desires of unrequited love. This sense of longing and frustration fills his personal life.

So, in the poem, the swans represent powerful symbols of beauty, time, loss and unfulfilled desires. They stand as the symbols of the poet’s unfulfilled desires. They are the symbols of eternal beauty of the nature. Their freedom and wilderness make the poet regret of his age old conditions. Therefore, the poet also longs for his freedom and artistic creativity like that of his youth. Thus, the swans evoke the eternal longing of the poet’s artistic creativity and remind the poet of his unrequited love of his youth.