Blog Post #17 Poetry Response

Lily Sale

The Coming Of Wisdom With Time by William Butler Yeats

First, I always make a point to look at the structure of the poem. At first glance I see uncapitalized sentence to start, and only four lines. I believe that poets do everything in their work with purpose. The purpose of this uncapitalized sentence to start can be answered by the title of the poem. As he matures, he becomes more wise, “The Coming Of Wisdom With Time”.  Maybe this wisdom is shown by transitioning from uncapitalized to capitalized. The overall meaning of the poem to me is growing up as an individual, becoming wise. Yeats focuses and truth telling, that's what he believes growing up is; telling the truth, stopping the lies. His first line, “through leaves are many, the root is one;” to me, I believe Yeats is talking about all the different points of views people can have. If something were to travel through leaves, it could hit others and switch direction, but traveling through a root is easy. There is only one way. The leaves represent lies, and the root represents truth. He then goes on to say, “Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;”, interpreting this I believe Yeats is trying to create this image in our heads of a carefree child. Lying didn't affect him, he swayed in the sun. But now, with time, “Now I may wither into the truth” you can’t hide from lies, or you will slowly wither. I believe Yeats is writing this from experience. Of course the use of “I” shows that, but he seems to be passionate enough to create a poem to share a story, or in this case a lesson. Now that he has grown up, he knows he must change his ways. He relies this lesson onto his audience, maybe to open the eyes of the old, or to teach the young early.