When You Are Old

Ii

No Second Troy

Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Yeats wrote over twenty volumes of poetry in his long career as well as many plays. His best-known plays are "Cathleen Ni Houlihan" (1902) where the poor old woman symbolizes the misfortune of Ireland, and "Deirdre" (1907) based on Celtic mythology. Yeats was very important in the revival of Irish drami in the early age of the century, known as the OH и Revival, and his plays were staged at the famous ЛМ

Theatre in Dublin. He described himself as "the last of the Romantics" in 1931, and wrote one of the best poems, "Sailing to Byzantium", describing Ireland as "no country for old men".

From love poems to poems of political crisis, the range of Yeats's work makes him one of the great poets of the century. Later he denied the sentimental and romantic trends of his earlier work. The style of his verse became more intricate, where his personal me­mories prevailed. He felt disappointed with the world unfit for sensitive people:

We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our Love.

(from'T/ie Tower")

In his poem "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" the airman knows he will die in a war which does not affect his village in Ireland. Still he will die because of the pleasure of danger and excitement of fighting ir the air:

I balanced all, brought all to mind; The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind, In balance with this life, this death.

In his last poem Yeats comes back to the unheroic place where they all began. He uses a metaphor to underline the idea that he doesn't try to pretend now to use grand language to describe great themes:

Now that my ladder's gone. I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. 212

William Butler Yeats managed to form a link between two epochs of English literature by his evolution from the romantic Symbolist of the very end of the 19th century to the sophisticated Realist of the 20th century.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look, Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.

How many loved your moments of glad grace And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim's soul in you And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

William Somerset Maugham is

one of the best known English writers

of the 20th century. He was not only

a novelist, but also one of the most

successful dramatists and short-story

writers. He believed that the charm of

a story lied in its interesting plot and

exciting situation. More than that,

Maugham's story always implicates deep thought and

signifies critical approach to the characters. The writer

points out that a short story "can be read at a single

sitting", it must have a beginning, a middle and an end. His short stories are usually very sincere and logically explained.

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 in Paris, where his father worked at an Embassy. But his parents died when he was young, and his uncle, an English clergyman, brought him up. Maugham got his education in Germany and studied medicine in London. | His first novel "Liza of Lambeth" came out in 1897. It gives a realistic picture of slum life, and much is taken from his own experience as a doctor. Maugham went on producing books, but his first masterpiece, "Of Human Bondage", appeared only in 1915. His own life, hardships and difficulties are described in this novel. It brought the writer fame. But it was "The Moon and Sixpence" (1919) which made his reputation of a nov­elist established.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-07