At the heart of both poems, Yeats is preoccupied with Ireland's ancien regime, with social change, and with modernity. Both poems feature narrators torn between the natural or felt, and immanent reality, and in both this is symptomatic of an identity paradox. Yeats as poet seems to be suffering his own (invented?) identity crisis by writing in formal, rhymed meter but employing ambiguous, difficult symbolism.
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (dactylic hexameter? alternating on the last line of each stanza with pentameter, maybe in the style of classical poetics, and so pointing up the ancient vs. modern). The speaker longs for a monastic life in the country, where he will adopt older ways of living. In this slower world, time seems to become inverted: "midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow", suggesting an escape from aging. In the third and final stanza, the irony of the speaker's longing is suggested by his day to day surroundings, the modern infrastructure of "roadways" and "pavements grey". The disconnection between Yeat's speakers' longings is located in his "deep heart's core"; this may also be the only place where his desire will be fulfilled.
Questions There is a discrepancy between the speaker of "King Goll", and the title, which labels him "mad". Who should we believe, or to what degree is the "madness" of Goll ironic? What is Yeats' attitude to Goll, and those who would describe him as mad?
What does Yeats accomplish by making the connection between the "wires" and the "whirling and a wandering fire" ambiguous? Is "King Goll's" meaning diluted by the range of interpretations (Catholic, political, ontological)?
How are realistic details at play in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"? Are the poem's description of the natural convincing? On how many levels?
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