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The Wild Swans at Coole by William Butler Yeats

 

The 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?

 

The Wild Swans at Coole

I think my favorite poem by Yeats is the Wild Swans at Coole. I had just returned from a trip to South America. I’d been away for awhile. I was in Philadelphia visiting a friend in South Philly who just happened to have a book of Yeats and a new album by David Bowie called Diamond Dogs, which is what I was listening to when I was reading Yeats. All my senses were going a mile a minute. Both Bowie and Yeats were beautiful. When I got to the Wild Swans, there was not one more word than there had to be, and the sound of the words with the images they were conjuring up exist completely together, meant to be, the liquids and the almost rhymes, the length of watery sounds. Diamond Dogs probably remains my favorite Bowie; same with Yeats and the Wild Swans.

Common American Swan, 1838, by John James Audubon

Trumpeter Swan, circa 1823, by John James Audubon

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