A Few Poems Unlocked (Week Two)

Walt Whitman, Matthew Arnold, William Butler Yeats, and Robert Frost are all poets who anybody could speak about for hours. Their greatness has made a mark on the literary world and that is why their poems constantly appear in textbooks and poetry books. Their poems are a joy to read and for a second take you away from the world that surrounds you into the realm of their words.

In the poem “When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats you get a glimpse of what the future will bring. He depicts an individual who is will hopefully look back on the past with joy, but presently only has “this book” to remind them of those times. It depicts old age as being “gray and full of sleep,” which is not an existence filled with excitement, but instead a sense of tranquility. Evenings are not spent out on the town by instead with dreaming, “nodding by the fire,” and life in slow motion. It is a life of living vicariously through the past and enjoying the fact that you experienced love and lust. This individual was lucky because they experience true love, the kind of ideal love that Shakespeare wrote about because they had “a man [who] loved the pilgrim soul… / and loved the sorrows of your changing face.” That love is dead and in the heavens, so the only thing that remains to fill your heart with joy is memories. This poem sends the message that live your life to the fullest when you are young, love with your whole heart, experience the world, because when you are “old and gray” those memories are going to keep your heart alive. Yeats also uses a rhyme scheme in this poem, which adds to the calm soothing feel to this poem. The endings words of line one and four and the endings words in line two and three rhyme in each of the three stanzas. It is like the words themselves are holding each other in and keeping the memories alive inside to be enjoyed and treasured.

Robert Frost in the poem “The Road Not Taken” depicts a feeling that everyone experiences numerous times in their lives. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” represents the fork in the road that we all come to in our lives. A decision must be made, a life altering decision, with no clear distinctive reason to choose either path. “And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black,” both roads are equally appealing and there is no clue as to what other people chose to do in that situation. It is the individual alone with themselves choosing their fate without the opinion or experiences of others weighing the decision. Frost shows how there is now way back from certain life choices, but how that is alright and one must be satisfied with looking forward. “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back,” people do not always have the opportunity to remake an important decision. Traveling back in time or turning back the clock are only occurrences we see in the fantasy realm of the cinema. A person needs to be content with the choices they make in life and live with no regrets. Frost depicts that message when he ends his poem with “I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Previously in the poem the two paths were shown as being equal, but because the individual chose one it has become the right path and the one that has shaped his world. You have to make your own decisions without the weight of the worlds opinion on your shoulders, which makes the path you choose “less traveled” on.