Point of View

“Wild Swans at Coole” is written in first-person point of view; however, this isn’t made clear until the first line of the second stanza: “The nineteenth autumn has come upon me” (Line 7). Here, the poem shifts its focus away from the wider, less personal world and onto the individual. Lines 7, 8, and 9 all use first-person pronouns to indicate that the speaker is considering their own experience. The third stanza continues this pattern. The fourth, however, removes the first-person pronouns and turns its attention back to the landscape the speaker is looking upon. It’s not until the final closing couplet that the speaker reintroduces themself into the scope of the poem. In this way the narrative point of view functions like a camera lens, bringing the reader into the poem with an establishing shot and then alternating between the “wide lens” and the more human...