The Wild Swans at Coole

Overwhelmed by nature's beauty; the speaker in William Butler Yeats' poem "The Wild Swans at Coole" shares with us his reminiscence; through which he allows us to have a rare glimpse to the swans' world. These beautiful creatures with its aristocratic like manner and radiant serenity has a great influence on the tone of the poem. Though pastoral and calmly feelings are quite dominant in the entire poem; yet a sense of calamity is about to come. Things are not as they seem in the first place, and it is well reflected through the gradual changes in the poem's tone.

In the first stanza the speaker describes a still nature's scene in which we get to know the swans' natural habitation. The trees blossom, the water of the river reflects a bright soft sky and there are fifty-nine swans in the lake. However this still feeling is somewhat intimidating. As much as the word "still" suggests serenity it might suggests stillness of life and death as well. Moreover the counting of the swans by the speaker doesn't make things any better; on the contrary it foreshadows future happenings. Since it seems that the swans decline in number from autumn to autumn, even though there is no explicit evidence for this.

Unfortunately what happens to be mere guts feeling turns to be true, as we can see in the second stanza, while the speaker keeps count the swans, something ominous happen, that flow to the third stanza as well. "All suddenly mount /and scatter wheeling in great broken rings". The peaceful tone that we sensed in the first stanza suddenly changed into a gloomy one. The bell's beat of the swans' wings turn into clamorous wings. While the speaker's heart sore as he witnesses this dreadful sight, the swans on the other hand soar and fly away, probably from the long hands of the poachers. Despite this unfortunate incident that the speaker and the swans had experienced, they ceaselessly and vehemently keep maintaining their unique relationship, just as two lovers. The speaker personifies the swans as he compares them to pair of lovers that paddle in the cold and wander wherever they like; they eternally assign to be young as if their hearts have not grown old. At the same time this "lovers" image can reflect the relationship between the speaker and the swans as well. As we can see how he attends upon them, like a swain he never worn by their delighting sight.

Toward the end of the poem we realize that all of these images were but a dream, a dream in which the speaker wishes to create a better place to the beautiful swans, a place where will be no poachers that disturb nature and humans alike. Harrowed by the fact that the swans might flown away either as a consequence of awakening from his dream or as a consequence of unnatural dying by the poachers, the speaker doesn't hurry to wake up. He finds it upsetting to wake up just "to find they have flown away". Thus he prefers to escape from reality into the imaginative world where he can at list experience an everlasting joy.

While Yeats' poem "The Wild Swans at Coole" expresses the idea that humans disturb nature, Robert Frost's poem "The Sounds of Trees" on the other hand convey just the opposite. The speaker in Yeats' poem obviously is a nature enthusiastic person .He is so enthralled by nature that he can barely remove his eyes from the lovely swans. As he expresses his fears of humans' malevolent quality towards nature, the speaker in Frost's poem feels intimidate by nature and even hunted by it. The sounds that come out of the tossing trees scare him in a manner that he feels hopeless and helpless. Moreover considering his progressive ageing state doesn't make thing much easier. There is nothing he can do in order to make thing straight, since he has neither the power nor the stamina to face the forces of nature.

As we look into these two different poems, we can see that both of them convey meaning through sounds. In Yeast's poem we hear the bell- beat of the swans' wings - as it once used to be, in contrast to their clamorous wings' state now after they have been shoot by some baleful humans. Though there are any sounds of gun shoots in the poem, yet we can sense the echo of them in the air, since the sound of the swans' clamorous wings speaks for themselves. While the speaker in Yeats' poem enjoys the chime's sound of the swan's wings, the speaker in Frost's poem suffers from the sound of the rustling trees, to an extent that he calls it noise. Just by the sound device we can sense the different attitudes of these poems towards nature.

The tone in "The Sounds of Trees" is quite depressing,