Discuss Yeats as a personal
poet with reference to the poems on your syllabus.
Very few poets of
the modern age have written as much about their family and their friends as Yeats
has done. If we place side by side his life story and the large bulk of poetry
written by him, we can easily notice a close reflection of certain important
events in his poetry. In spite of the obscurity in Yeats’ poem we find that
many of his poems are based directly upon events that actually affected him greatly.
Apart from these, there are quite a few poems which have references to his friendships
and relationships and bring in personal details in a big way.
Like Shakespeare Yeats
also seeks to immortalize a few events of his life in black ink. There are direct
reference to friends and personal relationships in some poems which connect him
with the Romantics. The history of Ireland,
he adds, is to be traced in the features of those portraits, and he goes on to say
that “my glory was I had such friends”.
In a note of his diary Yeats said, ‘’ friendship is all the house I have’’
The most important factor in Yeats’ personal poetry is
his love for Maud Gonne and the sense of loss resulting from his failure to
marry her. ‘When You are Old’, ‘Among School Children’, make direct or implied
reference to her. Yeats met her in 1889 and was swept off his feet at the very
first meeting by her charm. This is how he described her, ‘’ Her complexion was luminous,
like that of apple blossom through which the light falls and I remember her
standing that first day by a great heap of such blossoms in the window.’’
In the poem, ‘When You are Old,’ the poet engages in the fancy and tells us
that one day his beloved will grow old and will lose all her charms and beauty.
Everybody who admired her will go far away, only the poet will love her even in
her old age. He did not love her youthful beauty but the pilgrim soul within
her.
