An Analysis of Blake's "The Wild Swans at Coole" "The Wild Swans at Coole" is a poem about the aging process by William Butler Yeats. It is a deeply personal poem that explores the cycle of life through nature. The poem is set in autumn in Coole Park, which is located on Lady Gregory's estate. The poet stands on the shore or near a large pond and watches the swans. Nineteen years have passed since he first came to this place, and it is during this visit that he begins to realize that he is getting old. The poet is parallel to nature in the poem, as he represents its present state while, in the poem, there is a contrast between the poet and the swan because the swan is used as a metaphor for the poet's youth. The poem is written in iambic pentameter and consists of five pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables. The use of nature in the poem serves to illustrate the age of the poet. The first line of the poem, “The trees are in their autumn beauty,” presents the reader with a sense of maturity. The trees are ready to complete their annual cycle by shedding their leaves. After reading this line, a vision of bare branches comes to mind, representing vulnerability in a bare tree. The leaves that the tree lost protected the "skeleton" of the tree. Like the tree, the poet will also lose something as his cycle nears completion. The leaves can also be associated with the poet's youth; like a tree, without leaves, man without his youth is vulnerable. The poet will lose his youth and, in old age, he too will be exposed to the harshness of the world. The use of the line "The paths of the woods are dry" in line 2 reinforces the first line of the poem by presenting the reader with the image of a dried piece of paper......in the center of a...... eping, but he is in fact awakening from his death. “The Wild Swans at Coole” is a poem dominated by ideas of the poet's youth and the presence of death in his future. Yeat uses symbols such as nature to represent his current self and swans to represent his youth. During this nineteenth visit of the poet to Coole, he becomes aware of his age. He compares himself to much of what he sees in nature and envies the swans because they represent a permanence that the poet could not achieve. It is as if time has stood still in this pond because it is the same one Yeat remembers it to be nineteen years ago. The end of the poem foreshadows the poet's death, and it can be assumed that this will be the last visit to Coole Park on Lady Gregory's estate. Works Cited: Parrish, Stephen The Wild Swans at Coole (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1995)