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

Yeats in Time The Poets Place in HistoryAll things can take in me from this craft of verseOne time it was a womans face, or worse--The seeming needs of my fool-driven landNow nonhing but comes readier to the handThan this accustomed toil.In these lines from All Things can Tempt Me (40, 1-5), Yeats defines the limitations of the poet concerning his role 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 verse line, 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 traditional Irish characters, such as Fergus and the Druids, to create an Irish mythology and thereby foster a national Irish identity. After the division of the Cultural Nationalists, Yeats feels leave behind by t he movement and disillusioned with their violent, foolish methods. He is also repeatedly rejected by Gonne. These efforts to instigate change through poetry both(prenominal) fail, bringing the function of the poet and his poetry into question. If these unfruitful poems tempt him from his ?craft of verse,? then what is the true 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 expression 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 trying to awake it is the very world in which he lives. When he says that if Gonne had understood him he would have ?been content to live,? it is another manner of saying that (since she can ne ver understand him) he is not content to live. As a poet, he has undergone a kind of death, rendering him a dead observer of the present while becoming an active participant in the past 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. New YorkNorton, 2000.Ramazani, Jahan. The Elegiac delight Poems A Woman Dead and Gon(n)e. In Yeatss Poetry, Drama, and Prose. Ed. James Pethica. New York Norton, 2002.