The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Yeats, William Butler. "The Wild Swans at Coole." Poetry Foundatio. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43288/the-wild-swans-at-coole.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“Wild Swans at Coole” was written about the poet’s own experiences at Coole, an area of natural beauty in Galway, Ireland. The poem was inspired by Yeats’ feelings about the first world war, which was devastating Europe at the time of writing. In the poem, the speaker returns to a lake after nineteen years and watches the swans that gather there. The swans make the speaker reflect on their own changing life compared to the seemingly eternal beauty of the landscape around them. By the end, the speaker acknowledges that eventually this place too will change and the swans will move on.