THE SORROW OF LOVE (William Butler Yeats)

 

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.

 

 

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Final Printed Version, 1925

http://www.uv.es/fores/poesia/sorrowlove.html


First of all, I want to explain what my paper is going to be about. I am going to analyse one poem by W.B. Yeats, who is one of the 20th C poets that we have studied in class. According to the title of the poem “The Sorrow of Love”, we can suppose its meaning in relation with the poem. In my opinion, the title contains the main theme of the poem. Love is a very strange thing. The title is a common topic which the reader can easily identify with.

If we pay attention to the scheme of the poem, we realize that there is a progression of emotions, from being happy to being sad. The three stanzas reflect how the author feels. So, we can say that the author narrates a story about himself. The first one belongs to the time when he was with his lover. It is the time when you feel your life is full and everything has a special colour. He is describing a lively and happy situation “brilliant moon”, “milky sky”, “famous harmony of leaves”. However, these sensations disappear in the third stanza. The leaves lament the loss of something or someone; there is “an empty sky”. The clue to understanding this change resides in the second stanza, where the author shows who his lover is. In the 7th and 8th verse, there is an allusion to Odysseus and Priam, who are mythological characters. In my opinion, the author uses these characters in order to express the suffering in his relationship. Odysseus makes reference to the time when the author could not be with her. Odysseus spent his life fighting and sailing, for this reason he could not be with his wife who was in Ithaca. On the other hand, Priam was the king of Troy. As everyone knows, there was a great war and finally Priam died in this fight trying to save his land. The author is using these metaphors to make reference to that moment when he got the best of his life and after all, that he wanted, disappeared. His lover had died.

If we have a look at the biography of W.B.Yeats, we find an interesting detail which supports my idea that this poem is autobiographical. Yeats in one of his visits to Ireland, in 1889, met Maud Gonne, an actress for whom he suffered an unrequited love. Some years after their initial meeting, Yeats wanted to get married to her, but she rejected him. Finally in 1903, when she got married with the Roman Catholic Irish nationalist John MacBride, Yeats lost all hope to get married to her.(Wikipedia, Maud) She inspired most of his early works. (emule, Author). No poet has celebrated a woman's beauty to the extent Yeats did in his lyric verse about Maud Gonne. From his second book to Last Poems, she became the Rose, Helen of Troy, the Ledaean Body, Cathleen Ní Houlihan, Pallas Athene and Deirdre. (Yeats society, influences)

 

Now, I realized that my first impression of the poem is closer to the main idea, although I am capable of introducing some variations. The lady, he loves, is alive. However, the relationship, which they had in the past, has had an end because he realized that she loved another man and she got married to him. Any kind of love relationship was impossible. For this reason, we notice that the tone which predominates throughout the poem is melancholic. It reflects the feeling that invades the author’s heart. Although sadness is the most important feeling shown, in my opinion, the last stanza “compose man's image and his cry” is a kind of self-reflexion, a kind of moral lesson. All the suffering you have had throughout your life, is good for you. First, you think that nothing will be the same and your life is a disaster, but later you realize that everything has a positive aspect. You cannot be in the depth of despair. Bad moments teach us. They make us stronger.

 

The structure of the poem consist of three stanzas of 4 verses each one. The rhyme is A-B-A-B, C-D-C-D, A-B-C-D. Along the poem we can find visual and phonetic rhyme: eaves-leaves, sky-cry, and tears-peers. Something which calls my attention is that in the second stanza, despite of being a different rhyme, the words sound similar. The sound “S” creates a silence and relaxed atmosphere. Everything is in silence. I can interpret this sensation as the progress of being alive to being dead. When someone or something is alive, sound is around us. But, when you are dying, everything starts to become dark and silence rules. When the author says “red mournful lips”, it suggests that the woman has very beautiful lips but little by little they are showing another face. Here, we have a contrast between the power of the colour red which symbolizes life, energy and the adjective mournful means that this kind of power is going down. Other elements to take into account in the analysis of the rhyme are that the author uses alliteration in the entire first and third stanza. Yeats is showing through these elements that the time is going by: he is transmitting his past and his present

 

 

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Author: http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=overview&author=64   20.03.06

Wikipedia: Wikipedia: The Free Enciclopedia. Maud Gonne, the Irish Revival and the Abbey Theatre. 21.03.06

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats#Maud_Gonne.2C_the_Irish_Literary_Revival_and_the_Abbey_Theatre

         Influences: Yeats Society Sligo. Hyde Bridge, Sligo, Ireland    21.03.06

http://www.yeats-sligo.com/html/wbyeats/influences.html