Wild Swans at Coole

by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939)

THE TREES are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin into an Irish Protestant family. His father, John Butler Yeats, was the son of a clergyman, who practiced law but turned to an Irish Pre-Raphaelite painter. Yeats’s mother, Susan Pollexfen, came from a wealthy family who owned a prosperous milling and shipping business. Yeats spent his early years in London and Sligo, a beautiful county on the west coast of Ireland.

William Butler Yeats Contemporaries
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant
Ernest L. Thayer
Bliss Carman