1/12/2024 0 Comments Death poem william butler yeatsAt the time this poem was written, she was traveling to France. Yeats wrote this poem about the woman he loved, Maud Gonne. By traveling to her grave and carving an inscription, the narrator makes sure the world knows she is loved for eternity. The narrator’s use of the word “lies” has a double meaning when he says that his love “lies under boards.” Not only does she physically lie in a coffin, but her beauty is now a lie as she will slowly decay and will no longer be beautiful.Īt the end, the narrator turns the attention to the reader by using the word “thy.” The reader becomes even more emotionally attached to the poem by reflecting on his own first love. This is illuminated by the shift from “she was” to “but now.” Buried in the dirt, her beauty is now unseen by the world. The last two lines emphasize how beauty fades. Often placed in cemeteries because they look sad, the cypress tree further emphasizes the solemn tone of the poem. His references to the cross and to a planted cypress tree add a religious and spiritual component. She was found by strangers who knew nothing about her and exerted minimal effort in burying her. “A cross they had made out of two bits of wood” presents the idea that her grave is neither made nor tended by a loved one. Using a dark and unsettling tone in the third and fourth lines, Yeats paints a picture of how the “peasants” of the foreign land “nailed the boards above her face.” Yeats emphasizes how she has died a lonely death away from home as the people of this land who do not know anything about her are the ones that bury her. While there is no definitive meter, there is certainly a clear rhythm. Yeats’s lyrical dreamscape expresses one of his consciousness’s deepest anxieties. Yeats initially shields the importance of the person who has died, but as the poem progress, the reader becomes aware that the narrator is dreaming about someone who he loves dearly. If he were comfortable with the idea of a foreign land, the word strange would not be utilized. By using the word “strange” to specify how the death took place in a “strange place,” Yeats stresses the importance of home from the beginning. Poem selected and commented on by Madison HutchinsĪfter reading the first line of the poem, the reader is aware that the narrator is about to recount a dream. She was more beautiful than thy first love, I DREAMED that one had died in a strange placeĪnd they had nailed the boards above her face,Ī cross they had made out of two bits of wood,Īnd left her to the indifferent stars above
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