Day 132: Wild Swans

Melancholy is a word often associated with poetry. A beautiful kind of sadness that attends some poems.

 

Like here in this poem by Yeats, where he laments growing old and disconsolate, comparing himself to the lone swan, without a partner (nine-and-fifty swans), being as he was a victim of unrequited love for most of his life.

 

But Yeats manages to transform his sorrow into something beautiful. Just look at the language: 'Under the October twilight the water/mirrors a still sky,' 'the bell-beat of their wings,' 'lover by lover,/ they paddle in the cold/ companianable streams.'

 

The Wild Swans at Coole - WB Yeats

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?