The Landscapes in W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot's Poet
This paper investigates the images of landscapes in the poetry of W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot, the two greatest poets of the last century. Facing landscapes of the present world and the ancient as well, using his imagination, Yeats maximizes the poetic quality in his poetry. Some of his favorite landscapes, for example, include Innisfree, an islet in Sligo, Thor Ballylee in Coole Park, Byzantium, which delineate clear-cut images of his poetic themes. Either Yeats lived in Sligo with his mother's parents in his childhood, stayed in Lady Gregory’s house in the Coole Park, and owned and lived in the tower, Thor Ballylee in summer; or he admired the old Byzantium that he idealizes in his supreme poems. They serve as optimum metaphors for his poetry, making his poetry simple but rich in its imagery. On the other hand, Eliot focuses on delineating the life of modern man in his poetry by using cities, including London, Boston, Paris, and St. Louis. The people of the cities are being described as faithless and purposeless with their mind void. His depiction of the city further represents the whole modern civilization. The big city is the backdrop of such infertile imagery of modern man.