"To Ireland in the Coming Times"

Rhyme: end rhyme, couplets

Meter: tetrameter, prevents the poem from heroic couplets

Form/Stanzaic Structure: Movement is slow, Monologue

Speaker: implied author

Audience: critics, Yeats’s opposition

Tone: juxtaposition of defensive and confrontational

Diction: formal and mystical diction

Syntax: Subject of the sentences are the implied author, verb is present tense passive

Sound Pattern: 1st stanza alliteration of the “b” sound, 2nd stanza “o” sound, 3rd stanza “ew” sound

Imagery: Refers to previous famous Irish writers, references to the supernatural angels, elementals, Druids. Repetition of “red-rose bordered hem” in each stanza, repetition of the word “measure”

Symbolic Language: red-rose bordered hem is symbolic of the implied author’s English background, tutor rose.

Figurative Devices:

Theme: The author is as worthy as those nationalist writers before him. The author does more than just rhyme, he includes the oldest parts of Ireland in his work.

Argument: Prove that his works are equal to if not better than the other Irish writers.

Rhetoric: 1st stanza begins with “know” changes to “nor” ends with “while” red-rose bordered hem changes from because to after and last sentence is after.

Flaws: Beginning of the 3rd stanza when he starts writing as addressing of unrequited love.

Summary: 1st stanza is arguing that he is a true Irish man, regardless of his families background, because he is connected to Ireland’s ancient past. 2nd stanza, he is among the great Irish writers because his work goes deeper than traditional nationalist authors to his perceived roots of Ireland, he is even better because he writers of the sacred instead of the mundane. Last stanza, he is writing for Maude Gonne, a more extreme Irish Nationalist with which he is deeply in love, but she has rejected him for not being devoted solely to Irish Nationalism. His heart is for those connected to the ancient Irish past. It will proven through time, that he has a true love of Ireland.