William Butler Yeats

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

The Coming of Wisdom with Time - context Summary

Reflection on Aging and Unity

Yeats uses a simple tree metaphor to describe personal maturation: youthful life is scattered into many leaves and flowers, outwardly swaying in sunlight, while age brings an inward turn toward a single root and "truth." Placed in The Wild Swans at Coole, the poem registers the poet’s recognition that experience consolidates personality and perception. It compresses a lifetime’s inwarding into a brief, elegiac moment of acceptance.

Read Complete Analyses

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.

default user
PoetryVerse just now

Feel free to be first to leave comment.

8/2200 - 0