Poetry is still a mystery to me; I find it very difficult to pull the important ideas out of Yeats’s words. The first time I read “Leda and the Swan” I took it at face value, Yeats was telling the story of Leda’s rape and the fall of troy again. Now thinking about how this poem may refer to the war in Ireland I am going to try and look at in in a different way.
In the footnote the editor notes that “Yeats saw Leda’s rape by the swan as the beginning of a new age,” with this information I would consider Leda as representing the world, and the Swan, or the action of the rape, to the battles of the war. A new era was emerging and Yeats realized that.
In “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” the speaker (Robert Gregory) divulges the reason he is fighting. He knows that he will die, and he seems to have accepted that fact. One thing that disturbs me are lines three and four: “Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love.” These two lines just make me ask, “why are you fighting then?” This question is answered in line eleven, he is fighting because he finds delight in flying. Nothing matters to the speaker, not the past, not the present, and not even the future.
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