"The Arrow"
The inherent symbolism of the titular weapon in this poem is made clear by the poet. The opening line admits that he thought of the beauty of the subject of the poem and the result—made from his own marrow—is the arrow. Therefore, ipso facto, the arrow is a symbolic image of the very poem describing it.
The Worn Moon
Near the end of “Adam’s Curse” the speaker creates lunar imagery:
“A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by the time’s waters as they rose and fell”
In connection with the idea that the curse of Adam is that everything has become labor defined by mortality, the moon becomes the poem’s symbol for the eternity of time which for man is finite in its capacity to pursue that labor.
The Great Archer
In the opening titular poem, the Great Archer “awaits His hour to shoot.” Some scholars suggest that this is a symbol for the poet who will later shoot that arrow which is, as previously noted, a symbol for the poem itself.
The Sleepy Country
In “The Withering of the Boughs” the poet makes mention of a rather strangely termed place he calls
“…the sleepy country, where swans fly round”
While it is a little oddly constructed, the symbolic meaning is pretty simple. Yeats is talking about a place where love is always and eternally perfect.
A Fool and a Blind Man
Not all in this collection is poetry. It also features play composed in prose about two kings engaged in a battle of wills. Yeats rather creatively and puckishly begins the play with a conversation not between the two kings, but between a Fool and a blind man. These two men are symbolic stand-ins for the more powerful monarchs as their storyline proceeds along a linear path that becomes a metaphorical shadow play. What is especially cool is that since they play opens with their conversation acting a symbolic microcosm of the more tragic dimensions of the central narrative, their symbolic significance is not just shadow play, but foreshadow play. Pay close attention to what these two men say at the beginning and the alert person will know how the story ends.
