Question 7 references another poem about dreams also published in The Wind Among the Reeds, “ Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.”įive questions for further discussion are found in the accompanying worksheet.Question 5 discusses the terms below and their meanings from the EDSITEment literary glossary: assonance repetition alliteration consonance and meter.(See also the teacher version with suggested answers.) In whatever venue, make sure that students provide evidence from the poem in their answers. The seven questions in this worksheet can be adapted for use in a classroom discussion or literature circle and are aligned with Common Core literacy standards for grade 8. Yeats” and Stephen Watt's, “The Voice of Nationalism: One Hundred Years of Irish Theatre,” Humanities 20, no.1 (1999). It moves the reader from the concrete world of the particular to the abstract world of the universal.įor background on the life and work of the poet, see the EDSITEment-reviewed Poetry Foundation entry on “ W. This shift underlines the gap between the earthly, physical world and the mysterious, magical otherworld. To express this conflict, Yeats employs a break in the middle of each stanza signaled by a semicolon or colon. He wrestles with conflicting desires-the ongoing need to handle the practical things of life and the strong compulsion to follow one’s dreams. In the poem, Yeats contrasts two realities: the earthly realm of ordinary life and the mystical otherworld of dreams. The life-quest he set himself was to find this girl who called his name before she vanished. With it, he caught a magical silver trout, which was then transformed into a vision of a “glimmering” maiden. The speaker is an old man reminiscing about an event long ago when he was compelled to go out to cut a branch for fishing. “The Song of Wandering Aengus” is deceptively simple, yet it paints a haunting story containing many mythological allusions and nuanced levels of meaning. These early collected poems displayed Yeats's mastery of the lyric form as well as his passion for Celtic mythology and Irish folklore, which were to fuel his poetic genius throughout his career. It was first printed in 1897 under the title "A Mad Song." The current title "The Song of Wandering Aengus" was applied when it was finally published in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). William Butler Yeats wrote “The Song of Wandering Aengus” on January 31 sometime in the late 1890s. Available at Project Gutenberg.Īn online version of the poem is also available on EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets.
Supplementary documents provide contextual background on Irish traditional sources including Celtic mythology and Irish aisling poetry. Yeats includes information about the poem and discussion questions. Teacher guide “The Song of Wandering Aengus” by W. One must always have lyric emotion or some revelation of beauty…" I only learnt that slowly and used to be content to tell stories.
from circumstantial to purely lyrical writing. is the kind of poem I like best myself-a ballad that gradually lifts. "I think a kind of half ballad, half lyric.
0 kommentar(er)
