(toc) #title= (Table of Content)
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
T(caps)he Irishman in the poem is an imaginary soldier who fought in the First World War. The poem was dedicated to Robert Gregory, who was an active, talented, and brilliant soldier. The poet expresses his personal, emotional feelings about the futility of man‟s engagement in wars, the vanity of human life, as well as the inevitability of death.
The poet probes the troubled mind and dilemma in which an English soldier found himself while engaged in the First World War. He does not see himself surviving the war even as he flies the warplane high above enemies. He finds himself engaged in self-reexamination, self-pity, self-critique and concludes very early in the poem that he might not survive the war:
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above.
His location as a soldier, air regiment during the war was not a barrier to death nor was it a guarantee for victory in the war. He confesses that he had no particular reason for getting involved in the war as he insists “those that I guard I do not love”. Yeats sees it as mere stupidity for man to fight and kill his fellow human beings in war, as the art of warfare itself is not a sign of love for one’s country or of hatred or patriotism. It is also not possible to predict the end of any war, and wars are never profitable, just that war is a burden “cross” that we must bear. The main theme of the poem is the futility of war. Its subthemes are death, vanity, and futility of human existence.
3.3.1 The Second Coming
The poet discusses the impact of the world war, particularly the Irish rebellion and Russian revolution. The poem refers to every two thousand years period as a full circle of history. Yeats is of the opinion that every two thousand years is full of historical epoch. The end of a historical circle births the beginning of another new circle of history and experience. The poet is concerned with the diminishing value of the contemporary person. He recalls the imminent arrival of the antichrist who will arrive to make history as predicted in the holy Bible. He touches at the social, political, and economic problems that humanity of the present century will experience. These will define the new government of the antichrist. The poet explains:
A shape with Lion body and the head of a man
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun
Is among its slow thighs, while all about it …
The darkness drops again, but now I know
The twenty centuries of stony sleep.
Sailing to Byzantium
Byzantium was the political capital of Byzantine Empire, the city now referred to as Istanbul. But the poet does not merely mean the physical city but an attempt to escape from the natural political world, perhaps to paradise. It could be Yeats’ conception of the necessity of birth and death in which humanity is entrapped.
He merges the political Byzantium with an imaginary or fictive space. Very imagistic, it chronicles the Cathedral at Byzantine, St. Sophia, where saints are laid to rest. The poet’s interest is in the changeless immortal existence where songs of Angels thrive compared to the singing birds in trees in our physical landscapes. He insists:
Those dying generations –at their song
The salmon-falls…whatever is begotten,,
Born and dies caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect
The poem looks like an extended piece of metaphor wrapped around imagery to a puzzling house of thought to bridge the metaphysical with actual landscapes. The poet creates a relationship between the mortal body and the immortality of the soul. The latter sings to redefine and give life to the body, tattered material over the ages. As the material body gets old and diminishes, the soul gets ready to vacate its tattered house in readiness to sail to paradise, a Byzantium. In this state, the human body, the poet seems to argue, loses its radiance, harmony, and essential wholeness qualities. Yeats states:
An aged man is but a paltry thing
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless …
For every tatter in its mortal dress
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence
And therefore I have sailed to the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in gold mosaic of a wall.
Considering the last lines of the extract from Yeats' poem, the poet is ready to leave this world to where he hopes to meet the saints who will admit him into his holy city, Byzantium. And, once admitted into immortality, the poet hopes to live in a state of absolute joy and undying “ …the artifice of eternity”. Afterwards, the poet’s soul will join the trail of heavenly choristers “set upon a golden bough to sing” and praise the “Lords and ladies of Byzantium”. The poet is unpretentious about the final inevitable state of every person and anticipation of the soul’s divine responsibility when s/he quits the natural world.
When You Are Old
Yeats suggests poetry as a necessary therapy for the aged who may be interested in recalling the true picture of a lifetime. Poetry to Yeats is a form of diary that may be revisited or consulted, perhaps for a reevaluation of the individual’s activities on earth; “when you are old and grey and full of sleep”. For a necessary therapy that poetry offers, the poet assures “…take soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadow wry deep”. Poetry provides the avenue for self-assessment; one’s imagination recounts one’s earlier activities, failures, sorrow, joy, and pilgrimage, the “moment of glad grace”, “false” or “true”, “sorrows of your changing face” of “the pilgrim soul in you”. The poet believes that the material body is less significant; it’s a mere material bearer of the soul. The soul is itself on a journey which ends in old age, a period that the pilgrimage of the soul ends and s/he quits the carriage body, leaving the material body to return to nature decomposed. As the weak changing material begins to decompose the moment it gets old and weak, face and love depreciates. The human body shows the features of ageing, indicating an end of the pilgrimage.
In Memory of Major Robert Gregory
Major Robert Gregory to whom Yeats dedicates his poem was Yeats’ patron and collaborator in the revival of the Irish letters. The poet comes to terms with the reality of life, reminiscences his youthful companions. But most of those he thought of were all dead, one of the deceased is the subject of this poem. “All are in my thoughts tonight being dead”. The poet sees life as cyclical where friends are made and forgotten. “For all that come into my mind are dead”. He recalls Lionel John, the first among his friends. The deceased was admirably schooled and lettered in Greek and Latin, graceful and courteous. He states:
Lionel John comes the first to mind
That loved his learning better than mankind
Though courteous to the worst much falling he
Brooded upon sanctity
The poet’s thought made a shot at another deceased but important friend of his, John Synge “comes next”, a passionate and well-traveled man. The horseman who is well known at “racecourses”, George Pollexfen, “a muscular youth well known to Mayo men”, sluggish but “outrageous star”. Going through the impressive photographs of his great companions their breathless faces stared at the poet, particularly Sidney‟s “my dear friend’s son”. Yeats relates the experiences of a horse and racer to that of man on the course of life. The jumping, dangling, falling, rising, winning, and loses and the eventual death of the racer symbolizes the end of the race of life. He compares departed souls to the image seen in his “picture book”, “minds outran the horse’s feet”. The soldier, scholar, and horseman, and “painter had been born” but all were consumed by the combustible world. Yeats reconciles the image of fire to the world’s inflammability.
Leave a comment behind