Comparison of two poems essay sample

Comparison of two poems, “ The Indian to His Love” and “ The Hosting of the Sidhe”, written by the same poet.

Introduction
“ The Indian to His Love” demonstrates an appealing movement that makes the poem to appear unexciting and lifeless as compared to the highly exciting atmosphere that is created by the poem “ The Hosting of the Sidhe.” The two poems by William Yeats are completely different. For each poem, Yeats views the world from different perspectives. This therefore makes it impossible for the poet to successfully deal with the theme in “ The Indian to His Love” in the same manner as in “ The Hosting of the Sidhe”.
The relationship between the characters of the two poems is very little. In “ The Indian to His Love”, the characters are idealized mortals who to deal with the problems and challenges of the world as they are and deal with the world just the way other mortals do. “ Here we will moor our lovely ship And wander ever with woven hands,” there is also a line that says, ” How we alone of mortals are.” Simply put, the characters are not only mortal but also unspecified because Yeats does not make any personal identities whatsoever. They are not represented as individuals either. Apparently, the lovers decorate the scene much as ‘ peahens’. Yeats makes the characters to appear timeless. However, he goes on to remind the readers about the mortality of the characters. Yeats way of drawing the characters is seemingly puzzling. Characters are mortal but are not identified as human beings. Though fiction, Yeats characters are a bit technical and not so easy to understand. Yeats states that, “ How when we die our shades will rove”. His intention was to make the readers know that the mortals are in a dream but that same dream will end one day. He has no doubt that the dream is destined to end. However, one is left wondering when the dream will end. Such characters appear to be very unreal.
In “ The Hosting of the Sidhe,” on the other hand, the characters that Yeats decided to deal with are little people of Ireland. As compared to the other poem, the characters in this poem can be identified as people of Ireland and anonymity prevails no more. In this poem, there are no insipid mortals. “ The host is riding from Knocknarea” The characters are animals and beings with names and emotions. “.. Niamh calling away, come away.” It seems that the character will live forever since they are immortal. The characters are clearly described. “ Our cheeks are pale our eyes are agleam.” From this, one can deduce that the characters have some form of life that is common to most people.
As compared to the characters in “ The Indian to His Love,” these characters are very close to reality. This therefore enables readers to feel so closely associated with the characters instead of just watching them. The use of these characters makes the poem to appear real. The activities and description of the characters are so close to those of human beings and the reader therefore feels part and parcel of the poem. The activities performed by these characters are also not very far from what people do. In this poem therefore, the characters are more real than those mortal characters that Yeats used in “ The Indian to His Love”.
Similar to the characters the settings of the two poems are completely different. Yeats has shown no sign of injecting realism in “ The Indian to His Love,” setting. For instance, “ The Island dreams under the dawn. And great boughs drop tranquility: The peahens dance on a smooth lawn, A parrot sways upon a tree, Raging at his own image in the enameled sea”. It is very clear that these lines illustrate Imaginary Island that is enclosed by the imaginary seas. Yeats, in this poem has used fancy metaphoric terms, and are all joined to portray the dreamlike quality in this poem.
Contrary to the other poem, “ The Hosting of Sidhe”, the eminence settings are completely dissimilar from settings in “ The Indian to His Love”. The poet has well defined the exact environment in Ireland where the action takes place. For instance, “ The host is riding from Knockarea/ And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare.” This expresses how Yeats has been able to fetch his poetry into the society’s countryside. In this poem, although issues are not real, they appear more entrenched in reality than in the other poem.
In addition, the representation of action in the two poems is very different. For instance, in “ The Indian to his Love”, the poet has not tried to advocate action outside the most valuable activities. For example, “ And wander ever with woven hands, / murmuring softly lip to lip.” The poet has chosen every word in a sense that he is able to portray this picture in the mind of the audience. He has also given a sight of the changes he would utilize in the late poems such as “ The Hosting of Sidhe”.
“ The Hosting of the Sidhe,” is quite different from “ The Indian to His Love” in sense that the whole poem depicts actions. On the lines: “ Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam/ our arms are weaving, our lips are apart.” These lines create an image of Niamh on his flaming stead, hastening with determination. There is also depiction of nature’s actions; “ The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round.” This poem however does not show any sign of tranquility and peace. In “ the Indian to His love”, the sequence of the actions is not clearly represented contrary to “ The Hosting of the Sidhe”.
In conclusion, the two poems, “ The Hosting of the Sidhe” and “ The Indian to His love” are both, in their different ways, illustrating ideals. However, these ideals are different to the extent that there is a need of using different languages of which Yeats has achieved. Yeats has well illustrated the ideal of dreams in “ The Indian to His Love”. He has demonstrated the image by use of his words, an image that one can clearly derive from the poem. However, the image does not reach out; he has not brought the reader to a clear conclusion. Contrary, in the other text, “ The Hosting of the Sidhe,” the poet has been able to exhibit the ideal of life, which is depicted as immortals in the actual world. The aim of Yeats is to make the reader to not only observe the life but only to feel it in his poem. The reader is on the other side able to feel the difference in the two poems because of how Yeats has carefully chosen his worlds and altered his writing style.

The poems can be accessed from;

(a). http://www. poetry-archive. com/y/the_indian_to_his_love. html
(b). http://www. online-literature. com/yeats/784/