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William Butler YeatsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The swans that the poet/speaker watches along the lake in the park symbolize the power of otherwise unremarkable objects to spark the poet’s imagination. These “brilliant creatures” (Line 13), at once “mysterious” and “beautiful” (Line 26), are common swans that live in this park and in many other parks in Ireland and around the world. They are swans—that is critical to the argument of the poem. This is no lofty metaphysical meditation. The swans are there, on that lake, and the poet strolls along that lake and sees the birds.
Yet, without warning and without the poet’s intrusive interpretation, they effortlessly become the occasion of the poet’s ruminations and, in turn, create the conditions under which the poem itself comes into being. As such, the swans of Coole Park symbolize the poet’s muse, a term that refers to the interactive spark between the artist and the real-time world. Suddenly, quietly, that world or some element of it inspires the artist to create, to fashion an object that both reflects that interaction and elevates it to the status of art.
In turn, the artist, driven by this unanticipated reaction to the muse, transforms (or perhaps distills more accurately reflects the interaction) that same real-time presence into the gift of insight.
By William Butler Yeats
Among School Children
Among School Children
William Butler Yeats
A Prayer for My Daughter
A Prayer for My Daughter
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A Vision
A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka
William Butler Yeats
Cathleen Ni Houlihan
Cathleen Ni Houlihan
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Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
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Death
Death
William Butler Yeats
Easter, 1916
Easter, 1916
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Leda and the Swan
Leda and the Swan
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No Second Troy
No Second Troy
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Sailing to Byzantium
Sailing to Byzantium
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The Lake Isle of Innisfree
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
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The Second Coming
The Second Coming
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When You Are Old
When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats