A Woman Homer Sung

A WOMAN HOMER SUNG
We are going to analyze the poem A woman homer sung written by

Yeats.
The poem is narrative because the voice of the poem tells a story , but it
can be descriptive too because in the poem it is described a young woman "
For she had fiery blood".
This poem presents I-voice since we can see the pronoun "I" in several times
and the voice is telling its own story .
Talking about point of view , physically is internal because the voice is inside
the story that is telling, and from the point of view psychological is internal
too , because we can know what the character is thinking and feeling .
The tone of the poem is melancholy because the character regrets of not
having gone for woman that he was in love , and now he is old " and now ,
being grey" and he only can dream that he had been with her.
In relation to the structure the poem isn't follow a chronological sequence .
The character begins in present and then comes back to the past "When I
was young". The story is developed in the past "And shook with hate and
fear". After that , he speaks in present and he is telling that he regrets not
doing things to get her woman in the past "But oh , `twas bitter wrong".
Finally , at the last stanza he speaks in past to describe the loved woman "
For she had fiery blood " , and then he returns to speak in present in the
final conclusion "That life and letters seem , but an heroic dream".
The poem has three seven-line stanzas with full rhyme .For instance , "dear"
rhymes with "fear".
If we are going to talk about the register of the poem , it is standard , but we
can find some expressions of colloquial register in some contractions like
"'twas" and "twere".
At this poem we can see a semantic field related with young and woman:
Dream life time being grey sweetly proud fiery blood dear
We can find some figures of speech at this poem like metaphor , contrast or
simile .There are metaphor in expressions like " fiery blood " which means
that the woman is sensual , and "being grey " which means that he is old
and he has grey hairs. There are simile in the sentences " as `twere upon a
cloud " which compare the way that she walks and the surface sweet of the
cloud , and " That life and letters seems but an heroic dream" which
compares life with mythology .It seems that for Yeats it was very important
Irish Mythology and it is reflected in his poems.
This poem "A Woman Homer Sung" is from Yeats' "The Green Helmet
and other Poems" (1910). In this poem Yeats (1865-1939} exalts Maud
Gonne his lover into Helen of Troy, the woman "Homer sung" about in his
epic the "Iliad." For Yeats Maud Gonne had the effect of making art and life
seem unreal:
"For she had fiery blood
When I was young,
And trod so sweetly proud
As 'twere upon a cloud,
A woman Homer sung,
That life and letters seem

But an heroic dream."
It is precisely because, as the title of the poem itself indicates, that Maud
Gonne his lover can be equated with Homer's "Iliad" - "a woman Homer
sung [about]" - that other things however heroic pale into insignificance.
The myth becomes more important to Yeats than the physical body of Maud
Gonne.
Maud Gonne was the woman who dominated and tormented him throughout
his life and poetic career. Yeats first met her in 1899 and from then on was
obsessively infatuated with her. Yeats proposed marriage to her thrice but
was rejected because he did not support her Nationalist cause for freedom
from England. Maud Gonne later went on to marry the Irish freedom fighter
James Macbride. The marriage was catastrophic and Macbride himself was
executed for his role in the Easter rising of 1916. Nevertheless Yeats and
Maud Gonne consummated their relationship once in the year 1908. This act
of sexual consummation is the subject of the poem "A Man Young and Old"
in the same volume. However, Maud Gonne promptly severed all contact
with him. Yeats much later in life when he was 51 years got married to
twenty four year old Georgie Hyde Lees.
This poem describes vividly his feelings for Maud Gonne.The theme of the
poem reveals how he sublimates his physical desire for her body
into a spiritual and mystical state by the process of
mythologizing.Yeats'creation, the poem "The Woman Homer Sung"
represents his effort to mimetically represent the universal (the
myth of Helen) in his particular poem.

A Woman Homer Sung

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A Woman Homer Sung

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A WOMAN HOMER SUNG

We are going to analyze the poem A woman homer sung written by

That life and letters seem

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