The Treatment of the Swan Iconography in "The Wild Swans at Coole" and "Leda and the Swan." Kevin Fine 11th Grade

The image of the swan is thoroughly explored throughout Yeats’ poetry, in which it not only heightens the overall textual integrity but also allows the reader to ingest the suggestions that are intricate and simultaneous as posed by each Yeats text. Although the image and its meaning is distinct within each poem, “The Wild Swans at Coole” and “Leda and the Swan”, the treatment of the swan as a muse is recognised through its ability to bind various themes and key ideas together in both poems.

“The Wild Swans at Coole” demonstrates Yeats himself in the midst of temporal shifts as he attempts to seek an eternal sense of himself. Within this flux of time, Yeats demonstrates his despair by creating a comparison between his eternal self as well as the swan iconography within nature's seemingless beauty. Yeats’ romantic notions of sublime nature and time are used to structure his poem into six sestets; all in which exemplify his emotions through the swan iconography as he seeks solace and resolve.

The first sestet establishes the setting and time in which Yeats places himself in; “The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry”. The juxtaposition between the “beauty” of the autumn trees and the “dry” paths...