19 pages 38 minutes read

William Butler Yeats

The Wild Swans at Coole

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1917

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Related Poems

Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats (1926)

Yeats’s landmark poem, published nearly a decade after “The Wild Swans at Coole” echoes the anxieties of that poem and develops the idea of the power of art. The poem provides Yeats’s summary insight into the unsettling reality of time, the constant pressure of death, and the consolation offered to the artist by the artifacts they create.

An Old Man’s Winter Night” by Robert Frost (1916)

A poet often compared to Yeats, Frost here offers his own melancholy meditation on aging. Like Yeats, Frost uses nature, specifically a night blizzard, to suggest an energy that defies humanity’s inevitable surrender to time. Nature, after all, recovers from its winters.

Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1819)

A poet Yeats much admired and a poem he much discussed, this ode is a contemplation of the power of art to freeze moments and preserve them in a unique kind of forever. Sculpted in careful prosody that Yeats appreciated, the poem reassures humanity struggling in time that art is forever.

Related Titles

By William Butler Yeats

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Among School Children

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A Prayer for My Daughter

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A Prayer for My Daughter

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A Vision

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A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka

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Cathleen Ni Houlihan

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Cathleen Ni Houlihan

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Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

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Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

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Death

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Death

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Easter, 1916

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Easter, 1916

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Leda and the Swan

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Leda and the Swan

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No Second Troy

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No Second Troy

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Sailing to Byzantium

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree

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When You Are Old

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When You Are Old

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