by David Adelman

Created on: May 18, 2009

Dear Mr. Yeats

"My heart is sore". These words tugged at my heart because my heart is sore much like yours. My grandfather passed away on December 30, 2007. We were very close and somehow your words described how I feel upon my loss. Things have changed in my life and can never be the same again. Though I am young, much younger than you were when you revisited the swans after 19 years, I feel as if I have aged. I feel older. Experiencing death of a loved one - this permanent separation- has made me more aware of my life and how I want to live so much. Like you Mr. Yeats, I don't like feeling alone or lonely. This poem makes me feel so solitary and melancholy. Death is lonely. All of these feelings rush at me at the same time. You would understand my dislike of being alone, how life sometimes seems so discouraging.

Now to enter the imagination on a spiritual journey of a poem set in five-six line stanzas rhymed abcbdd. I started this journey by walking in the stillness and beauty of an autumn day. Autumn so colourful with yellow golden leaves. How I love autumn but autumn also symbolizes the passing of time and eventual decaying and mortality as the yellow gold leaves crumble under my feet. I watch fifty nine remarkably beautiful swans which are frolicking in their natural delight. Ageless swans. Free to be wild. Unchanging. Powerful and free to soar. I thought of my grandfather who was so active all his life and watched him lose all his power, slowly and painfully. It is very possible that You, Mr. Yeats were the same age as me, when you first saw these swans.. Time rapidly evolves in the blank space from the first stanza to the third. Then you age nineteen more years. The swans still remain unchanged and the same in number, meaning no deaths have occurred in their perfect ideal society. These brilliant swans never cease to amaze me, and I relate with you, Mr. Yeats, on this feeling. As I approach closer and closer to their sweat white feathery skin, the swans in unison display their independence and passionately vigorous actions by taking off in the sky, a true marvel- leaving my mortal being, alone and ever so astonished by their immortal freedom. Now I can truly feel the wildness of the swans by their display of power and passionate freedom. Continuing to walk in the the third stanza, I, just like you Yeats, realize a change in me. A sense of aging is taking place in us as our hearts get older but the swans' hearts have not become old. Right

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