W.B. Yeats and History Essay -- Poetry Poet Yeats

Yeats in Time The Poets Place in memorialAll things contribute tempt me from this craftiness of poesyOne epoch it was a womans face, or worse--The seeming needs of my fool-driven landNow secret code but comes readier to the handThan this accustomed trade union movement.In these lines from All Things can coax Me (40, 1-5), Yeats defines the limitations of the poet concerning his share in present time. These temptations (his love for the woman, Maude Gonne, and his desire to advance the Irish Cultural Nationalist movement) provide Yeats with the foundation upon which he identifies his own limitations. In his love poetry, he not only expresses his love for Gonne, he uses his verse to influence her feelings, attempting to gain her love and understanding. In regard to the Nationalists, he incorporates conventional Irish characters, such as Fergus and the Druids, to create an Irish mythology and thereby cheer a national Irish identity. After the division of the Cultural National ists, Yeats feels left wing behind by the movement and disillusioned with their violent, foolish methods. He is withal repeatedly rejected by Gonne. These efforts to instigate change through poetry both fail, bringing the function of the poet and his poetry into scruple. If these unfruitful poems tempt him from his ?craft of verse,? then what is the rightful(a) nature verse and why is it a ?toil? for the poet? Also, if Yeats cannot use poetry to influence the world around him, then what is his role as a poet?As ?All Things can Tempt Me? continues, Yeats addresses this question of role by describing the way he perceived bards in his youth. He speaks of the poet?s song, saying, Did not the poet sing it with such airs/ That one believed he had a sword upstairs (7-8). Thi... ...ory is not a nightmare from which Yeats is arduous to awake it is the very world in which he lives. When he says that if Gonne had still him he would have ?been content to live,? it is another way of sayin g that (since she can never understand him) he is not content to live. As a poet, he has undergone a kind of death, rendering him a lifeless commentator of the present while becoming an active participant in the by which his poetry explores. Whether he sees this role as a dream or a nightmare, if Yeats ever awoke from history, he would cease to be a true poet and his verse would lose its true meaning.Works CitedYeats, W.B.. Yeatss Poetry, Drama, and Prose. Ed. James Pethica. reinvigorated YorkNorton, 2000.Ramazani, Jahan. The elegiac Love Poems A Woman Dead and Gon(n)e. In Yeatss Poetry, Drama, and Prose. Ed. James Pethica. New York Norton, 2002.