Sound and Sense in Yeats’s Poetry

Abstract

Yeats combines sound and sense to maximize poetic effects of his poetry throughout his poems. He uses complex variations in his prosody to connote complex modern world. He deliberately uses various sound devices to emphasize organic unity of sound and sense such as alliteration, consonance, iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic foot, spondee, and even pyrrhic. The contrasts have important meaning in understanding Yeats’s poetic representation. Sometimes he follows traditional foot and meter to connote conventional meanings. Sometimes he deliberately breaks traditional rhymes and sound pattern to signify the death of convention. Above all, he keeps balance to harmonize poetic significance by combining conventional and unconventional prosody throughout his poems.