Among School Flashcards
Form: A Roman…
…numeral head each stanza.
Stanza 1: Start of poem…
…is presented realistically with Yeats visiting a school.
Stanza 2: “I walk” replaced by…
…“I dream”. Not wholly concentrating on the school room.
Stanza 2: “A Ledean body”.
Maud Gonnes youthful body.
Stanza 2: “yolk and white of an egg”.
Link?
Stanza 3: Yeats is shown looking at the school…
… Girls and wondering whether Maud stood so at that age. Memory of her drives his hear wild. She appears before him as a living child.
Stanza 4: compares her present image with past. “Float”
Present less powerful than past.
“Float” - gives it a spectral quality. Verb.
Stanza 4: suggests he was handsome once…
…abandons idea with a ceasura to emphasises the wishful thought.
Stanza 4: “better to smile on all that smile”.
Showing that he is trying to take the process of ageing without complaint. Link to byzant - tattered… Here trying to avoid bitterness.
Stanza 5: bitterness hard to avoid.
Looks at ageing man from mothers perspective. Questions if the suffering of a woman on childbirth is compensated… Sixty winters… Presents argument that all things age-bitter. Winter - bitter.
Stanza 6: mentions 3 famous philosophers. 1
Plato
Stanza 6: 2
Soldier Aristotle
Stanza 6: 3
Pythagoras
Form: Ottava…
…Rima. 8 stanzas with 8 lines. Regular rhythm. Regular rhyme scheme of abababcc.