William Butler Yeats

1. William Butler Yeats

2. born in Ireland in 1865 father and brother - famous painters concentrated on literature, composing poetry, and writing plays fascinated by history and culture of Ireland involved in Irish politics poem written in 1899, one of his earlier poems, reflects his interest in the Irish peasantry

3. The Song of the Old Mother I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blowTill the seed of the fire flicker and glow;And then I must scrub and bake and sweepTill stars are beginning to blink and peep;And the young lie long and dream in their bedOf the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,And their days go over in idleness,And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:While I must work because I am old,And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

4. What is it about? • a hard-working, poor old woman • compares herself to young women of the house (spend their days dreaming of love and worrying about their appearance) • could be her own children or the children of people she works for as a maid • written in the first person, as if listening in to the woman's own thoughts

5. Purpose? Perhaps to • Evoke sympathy for the old • Passing judgement on the young • Comment on hard life of social underclass

6. Dominant emotions? • Weariness? • Anger? • Disgust? • Self-pity? • Annoyance? • Whining? • Spite?

7. Emotion - tone of voice: How should the poem be read? • Wistfully - old woman wishes she could be like the young women? • Bitterly - angry that life has been so hard compared to the lives of the young women? • Sadly and resignedly - regrets that life has been like this but knows no option of changing it?

8. Dominant tone of voice? • resignation - but there is certainly a hint of resentment, even bitterness, in her attitude to the young • degree of sympathy we feel toward her will probably depend on whether we think the girls in the poem are the daughters of the Old Mother's wealthy employers, or her own children

9. Form • just ten lines long • most lines exactly ten syllables long • poem is almost like a square - ten by ten. Perhaps this reflects how limited the Old Mother's life is: she cannot break away from the rigidity of her life.

10. Rhyme • rhyming couplets • rhyme scheme is AA BB CC DD EE. • half-rhyme between the first and last couplets (blow and old) helps to 'round off' the poem • both starts and finishes with “the seed of the fire”

11. Rhyming couplets traditional rhyme scheme for simple songs and nursery rhymes poignant sad song about an old woman who feels left out of life rhymes as lightly as a child's nursery rhyme

12. Rhythm • four stresses or beats in each line. Each group of stressed and unstressed syllables is called a metric foot, and verse which has 4 feet per line like this is called tetrameter: • I rise ¦ in the dawn, ¦ and I kneel ¦ and blowTill the seed ¦ of the fire ¦ flicker ¦ and glow; Never ever offer technical terms without explaining/suggesting intended effect on reader!! 

13. strong regular rhythm – for what? • emphasises the physical side of the woman's work • the beat falls on “rise, dawn, kneel, blow” in line 1, for example, as if hammering out her tough routine

14. language • simple language • ordinary polite English (not colloquial) with few words more than one syllable in length • suggests that the woman’s life - a simple, straightforward • concerns/activities that occupy her now are basic as she says, “I must scrub and bake and sweep.”

15. The title indicates that the woman is a Mother. • not clear whether the young whose idleness she describes are her children or not

16. possible the word Mother merely an affectionate name for an old woman, and that she has no children - or that her children have grown up and left her alone If so, perhaps reminded of her own daughters when she sees the young women.

17. young women have nothing to do but worry about the colour of their ribbons Harsh contrast between the idleness of the young - who are more suited to physical work - and the old woman.

18. The young “sigh” or complain (line 8) if the wind merely disarranges their hair, but the old woman does not complain - at least, not explicitly. Final line could be a veiled complaint

19. Alliteration • repeated “b” and “k” and “p”plosive sounds in “scrub and bake and sweep” (line 3) emphasise how hard and physical the woman's work is. • long, languid “l”liquid sounds in “lie long” (line 5) help to convey the laziness of the young women.

20. Assonance • girls can almost be heard sighing in the assonance of line 8 “sigh if the wind but lift a tress”; • the soft rhyme and sibilant sounds in lines 7 and 8 – “idleness / tress” emphasises the gentle way in which they spend their days

21. Effective use of repetition • “ I must scrub and bake and sweep”in line 3 is echoed by “ I must work”in line 9, reinforcing the repetitive, unending nature of her work. • Line 10 “…” mirrors line 2 “…”, gives a feeling of finality and enclosure to the poem.

22. Each morning she blows at “the seed of the fire” (line 2) until it “flickers and glows”, and she can get on with the rest of her work. The seed metaphor suggests that the fire is alive and growing.

23. However, when “the seed of the fire” is repeated at the end of the poem (line 10), it refers to the 'fire' within herself. She is dying, so her own seed is not glowing/growing, but becoming feeble and cold. Her own seeds - her own children - are perhaps a source of disappointment as they are not thriving.

24. The Old Mother's day is dictated by the stars - she starts work at dawn and doesn't stop “Till stars are beginning to blink and peep.” • The burning stars echo the “seed of the fire”, glowing in the dark sky like coals in the hearth.

25. Attitude, Tone, Ideas • Much of the meaning of a poem is conveyed by the attitude it expresses toward its subject matter. • 'Attitude' can be thought of as a combination of the poet's tone of voice, and the ideashe or she is trying to get across to the reader.

26. Ideas • Yeats often wrote about the passage of time, and of youth and beauty giving way to old age and death.

27. The Song of the Old Mother is a meditation/reflection on this theme. contrasts two types of human endeavour: the young women's dreams of love and obsession with appearance; and the hard, grinding, thankless work that is the Old Mother's lot.

28. Who are the young women ? Old Mother's own children? Idleness may be easier to forgive. Perhaps in her youth the old woman herself dreamed of love, lay late in bed, and obsessed about whether her ribbons matched. Perhaps, as old people often do, she has forgotten what it's like to be young!

29. children of the old woman's rich employers? More likely to view them as spoilt and selfish young people whose idle lives are made possible only by the drudgery of poor servants like the Old Mother.