Free Sample Essays > World Literature
William Butler Yeats
in their autumn beauty” (I 1). Autumn symbolizes the end of life because all of the leaves are dying and falling from the trees. Death and sadness are coming to Yeats as he is aging and he has still not found any love. He goes on to say that “The woodland paths are dry” (I 2). This conveys another sense that life is not going well for Yeats and everything is going wrong. At the end of the stanza Yeats says that there “Are nine-and-fifty swans”
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(I 6). This means that there are only fifty-nine swans and one swan is without a mate. This symbolizes how Yeats is like that one lonely swan without anyone, while it seems like everyone else has someone. He has reached a point in his life where he is losing the will to find love as he gives up on Maud Gonne after she rejects him again.
The second stanza goes on to portray how Yeats is aging. He starts off by expressing his growing older and sadder through saying “The nineteenth autumn has come upon me/Since I first made my count” (II 7-8). This shows that Yeats has counted the swans for the past nineteen years at Coole Park.