The Wild Swans at Coole

30 lines

W. B. Yeats·1865–1939

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Summary Meaning

Yeats's 'The Wild Swans at Coole' meditates on the passage of time and the speaker's aging self, juxtaposed against the swans' seemingly eternal, unchanging beauty. The swans serve as symbols of immortal vitality and cyclical renewal, contrasting the speaker's acute sense of personal transience and emotional stasis. Philosophically, the poem engages with Platonic notions of ideal forms versus mutable reality, where the swans embody a perfect, unattainable permanence. The elegiac, contemplative tone, marked by precise sensory imagery and a measured cadence, underscores the speaker's sorrowful recognition that while the natural world continues in its timeless cycle, human life remains subject to irrevocable change.

he trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

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