William Butler Yeats the Early Term Paper

In all of these poems Yeats brings these fantastic worlds into such clarity -- both visually and emotionally -- for the reader that they feel swept away for the time they are reading. "Who Goes with Fergus" is exceptional in its ability to transport the reader into Yeats' world especially considering its brevity.

Finally, the poem that is most poignant in placing the Romantic movement is "The Wilde Swans at Coole." This poem is about change, and it clearly relays the heartache that one must feel when confronting the dramatic change of all that you know in your youth. Both WWI and the Irish Civil War were fought in the time between his first viewing of the swans and the one that he describes in this poem (Pierce 89). Both of these war changed the face of Ireland's world, both literally and figuratively, and Yeats was coming from a generation who had their roots forcibly removed and yet were expected to bloom anew.

Although Yeats is considered the last of the Romantic poets, these poems leave little room for doubt that he belongs with this group of great innovators of the art. Though he uses these intimate themes that are so closely related to the Romantic poets, he does so with such skill and delicacy that it separates him as truly one of the great Romantic poets regardless of his late arrival.It is his ability to express his personal experiences in such a way that pinpoints the human condition in order for everyone to understand the bigger picture that makes his work so enduring. His personal explorations of universal topics still connect with generations long after his death, and will likely continue to resonate with audiences long into the future.

Works Cited

Bell, Robert. "About Helen of Troy." Modern American Poetry. 1996. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hd/abouthelen.htm.19 July 2006.

Harmon, William, C. Hugh Holman, William Flint Thrall, & Addison Hibbard. "On

Romanticism." A Handbook to Literature. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995.

Pierce, David. Yeats's Worlds: Ireland, England and the Poetic Imagination. New Haven

CT: Yale Univ. Pr., 1995.

Yeats, William Butler. "The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland." The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. New York: Scribner, 1996.

Yeats, William Butler. "The Stolen Child." The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. New York: Scribner, 1996......