INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD ISSN: 2455-0620 Volume - 7, Issue - 10, Oct – 2021

Monthly, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed, Indexed Journal with IC Value: 86.87 Impact Factor: 6.719
Received Date: 15/10/2021 Acceptance Date: 28/10/2021 Publication Date: 31/10/2021

Was Yeats an Escapist?: An Exploration of His Poems, “The Lake Isle of

Innisfree” and “The Wild Swans at Coole”
Swasti Bisai
Student, Completed M.A., Department of English Literature, The EFL University (EFLU), Regional Campus,
Shillong, Meghalaya, India
Email: swasti.bisai21@gmail.com

Abstract: W.B. Yeats is considered as an escapist in his earlier works. It seems that he is a visionary, who tries to
escape from the hard realities of life to and seek refuge in the realm of romance and fancy. Although Yeats’s later
poems, of course, mark a definite change in his entire poetic creed and outlook. The dominant notes of Yeats’s
early romantic poetry are tinged with deep sorrow or pathos for the changes of the human world, elapsing of time,
ungraspable and fading love, growing old and coming death. He was also a romantic ideologist. His seeking for
the supernatural mythic world without conflict reflected another aspect of his escapism which was to end in vain.
As a matter of course, his poetry is a record of spiritual growth of an agonizing romantic escapist. On the other
hand, Yeats succeeded in generalizing or objectifying his lyrics by adopting various symbols from the ancient Irish
myths and legends. He seems to harmonize romanticism and modernism in his poetry. This paper aims to show
Yeats’s escapist nature through the poems, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and “The Wild Swans at coole”. Among
these poems, one belongs to his earlier poems and another one belongs to his later poems of his poetic career.

Key Words: Escapism, Romantic strain, Symbolism, Modernism, Humanism, Simplicity.

1. INTRODUCTION:
One of the most remarkable names in modern English Poetry is W. B. Yeats. His poetry, with its clear and
bright imagery, pure and impulsive statements, and haunting melody is one of the chief glories of modern English
Literature, more particularly of modern English poetry. His significance, like Eliot’s, is truly much and he seems to
epitomize the history of English poetry in his time. The literary works of Yeats is found to fall distinctly into three
groups. In his first phase, he wrote his earlier poems under the influence of the romanticists, like Spenser, Shelley,
Rossetti and particularly other late Victorian romantic escapists. His early works bear testimony to the note of romantic
escapism that haunted him in the early phase. A key early poem is The Lake Isle of Innisfree, it is a poem of idealistic
escape. The second phase of Yeats’s poetry comprises his symbolic and mystical poems, like “The Wondering of Oisin”
and “The Wind among the Reeds”. The influence of Blake is found particularly distinct in his poetry of this period. The
final phase or his later works, including “The Wild Swans at Coole” and other poems like, “The Tower” and “The
Winding Stair” are more realistic and bear out his serious, philosophic views. In fact, he has thirty or forty poems of
outstanding merits, including “The Tower”, “The Winding Stair” and the “Byzantium” poems. Although Yeats's early
poems have always been popular with the general reader. The whole Yeatsian criticism has concentrated on the
elucidation and evaluation of the more difficult later verse. Recent criticism, however, has shook the extreme assertion
that the early poems are more worthier than the serious attention not merely in relation to the whole body of Yeats's
poetry but as better than the later poetry. As a poet, Yeats is, indeed, great. In the opinion of Crompton Rickett, he stands
certainly superior in his age. As a music-maker and dreamer, as a lyricist and symphonist, Yeats is without a peer
among the poets of his generation, and his significance in modern English Literature is definite, immense. Probably the
greatest English Poet of the present century, Yeats’ most enduring work is the poetry of his maturity and old age. He is
characterized by its intense lyricism but in his last part or period of poetic career also stresses the vein of escapism. The
poem, like “The Wild Swans at Coole” is such an instance. Here the mere intention, of this paper, is to explore Yeats’
escapist nature through his early poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and even through his later poem like “The Wild
Swans at Coole”.

2. DISCUSSION :
Yeats’s poetry begins by echoing Shelley and Spenser and the Pre-Raphaelites, and Blake remained a dominant
influence throughout his poetic career. All the characteristic features and flavor of romantic poetry are present in most
of Yeats’s poem. The very tendency to escape to far of lands off lands of romance or to nature is present in Yeats’s
poetry. Yeats is essentially a romanticist. His poetry, particularly his earlier poems, bears a dreamy grace, and is haunted
with a romantic fancifulness. He is a rare figure among the modern poets of sensibility. In his earlier works as noted

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD ISSN: 2455-0620 Volume - 7, Issue - 10, Oct – 2021
Monthly, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed, Indexed Journal with IC Value: 86.87 Impact Factor: 6.719
Received Date: 15/10/2021 Acceptance Date: 28/10/2021 Publication Date: 31/10/2021

already, he appears to be a pure romanticist, following the tradition of the Pre-Raphaelite. His interest in simple folk-
life and sincere love in the world of nature and the supernatural truly indicates his romantic genius, that is marvelously
echoed in his poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and this remains one of the best romantic poems of all times:
“I will arise and go now, for always night and day,
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the road way, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” (Finneran 39)
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” was one of the dreamy romantic lyric which first brought him fame. This is a pastoral poem
written in 1888. The poem reflects the aspiration of the speaker who wants peace wants to rebuild a simple life in
Innisfree. Thus the speaker wants to have deep communication with nature. The place in the title of the poem, Innisfree,
was a small uninhabited island near yeats’s home. The poem also reflects the question of spirituality and Irish identity.
Here basically, through this poem, the speaker wishes to go to an island nearby called Innisfree, where he would build
a small cabin, he will plant few beans which will attract honeybees. This is how he imagined the place with full of peace
and a spiritual aura because of the hazy mist of the morning, the flickering of light at night and the purple during midday.
At the end of the poem, we can see, the speaker comes back to the reality standing on the roads or pavement, dreaming
about his heavenly dwelling place. Thus, this poem owes its success to the fact that it gives substance to the kinds of
dreams that most people have and expressed the sentiments most popular with people escaping the realities of the world
and are fond of going in for an ideal world, thus, escaping from the real world. Yeats himself was to admit that the poem
had an over-charged color of romanticism in it.
Yeats’s later poems, of course, marked a definite change in his entire poetic creed and outlook. The contents of these
poems are quite serious. He dwells here on human sorrows and sufferings, aims and aspirations. There is a distinct trend
to humanitarian aspect in his later poetry, and this goes very close to the interest of the romantic poets, like Wordsworth,
in humanity. Humanism is superbly restored in modern English Poetry through his great poetic efforts.
The influence of French symbolists is found abundantly exhibited in Yeats’s poetry. Here he is more than a
romanticist. He is, in fact, here a truly modern poet. Symbolism is a peculiar gift of modern poetry, and his poetry stands
very high as the ideal specimen of modern symbolic poetry. He has evoked a variety of emotions not by any direct
statement but by a multitude of indirect strokes. In fact, Yeats, along with T.S. Eliot, occupies a most distinctive place
in the range of modern symbolic poetry. Mythology is harmonized with natural imagery in his comprehensive symbolic
art and such an instance is his “The Wild Swans at coole”, which is a renowned melancholy, lyrical cry in the class of
pure personal poetry projected in the lap of nature and enlightened by the light of reflection in the poet’s grieved heart.
The poem is romantic, rather Neo-Romantic in nature, lyrical in style, mystic in the sense of accepting beauty of nature
and its mystery, melancholy in tone, reflective in presenting a perpetual conflict between human and natural world, and
therefore, symbolic in its presentation. Here is a contrast between the transistor human joy and youth and the permanence
of those of natural objects, the eternal passion and vitality of the swans and the evanescence of those in the poet’s heart.
During his first visit at the coole park the ‘brilliant creatures’ and the ‘bell-beat of their wings’ above his head so much
charmed him and delighted his heart that he came back home “Trod with a lighter tread”. But now, ‘a heavy weight of
hours’ has changed and bowed him; he falls upon the thorns of life and he bleeds. His youth, vigor, energy and vitality
are all gone now.
“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,…” (Finneran 131)
In fact, disappointment in live has withered his mind. His several love proposals and Maud Gonne’s blunt refusals and
her ultimate marriage with John MacBride in 1903 had hung heavy upon his heart. Besides the instability of Ireland, the
unleashing of violence in the Ester Rising in 1916, the fanaticism and narrow-mindedness of the Irish mob, the shutting
of his dream of building new Ireland and over all, his being sandwiched between hope and despair by love, all these
depressed his spirit which is expressed in the line, “And now my heart is sore.” (Finneran 131)
So the poem rings with a romantic note of subjectivity and a note of personal despondency just like Shelly’s
“Ode to the West Wind”. This note of personal despondency gets deepened when the swans are seen floating in pairs in
the cold water of the lake. A deliberate comparison between the swans and him is unavoidable in the following line:
“Unwearied still, lover by lover
They paddle in the cold
Companionable stream or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old
Passion or conquest, wander when they will
Attend upon them still.” (Finneran 131)

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD ISSN: 2455-0620 Volume - 7, Issue - 10, Oct – 2021
Monthly, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed, Indexed Journal with IC Value: 86.87 Impact Factor: 6.719
Received Date: 15/10/2021 Acceptance Date: 28/10/2021 Publication Date: 31/10/2021

Nature plays a prominent role in this poem; it appears to its richness and beauty as seen in nature poems of Romantic
Age. This poem is an instance of Yeats’s poetry of aging. Here in the midst of weariness, Yeats is in search of escapism,
because in such a moment only romanticism or escapism can give him some relief from his sandwiched situation
between hope and despair.

3. CONCLUSION:
Yeats is a true poet. He is like a wandering voice of the woods, a lyric cry, and an unending harmony. His
language is the language of common life and his use of language is just like Wordsworth’s conception of language
written in “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”. His poetry may be considered a long experiment in the pattern of the common
speech of men and women. His simplicity of using language glorifies him as a modernist. He is also a dreamer artist,
who dreams and sings and gives the true poetic pleasure to numerous readers, circumscribed by the rumble of machines
and the ruffle of commerce in this dreary mechanized modern life. He seems to harmonize romanticism and modernism,
in imagination and impulsiveness, in style and form thus he bears the very tradition of Romanticism. But his theme and
his presentation and treatment of the same have the instinctive inspiration from modernism. He is found to be an original
poet whose deviation from any other poet of his time is distinctly clear. Except in his earlier poems, Yeats never looks
like any other contemporary poet. His voice, profound enough, is typically his own, and sound his identity as a poet of
eminence. The strain of escapism is the most vital features of Romanticism, that’s why being a modernist Yeats is also
known as escapist.

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