Since he edited William Blake’s poetry, Yeats had been deeply concerned with the questions of “contraries.” And Plato was also an important influence on his theory. Relying on Blake and Plato, Yeats had worked for a long time to make his own theory in his poetry and prose, and succeeded in the elaborate system as elucidated in his book, A Vision.
“Among School Children” shows how Yeats has come to reach the ultimate reality, unity of being in the eighth and final stanza in it. Growing older, Yeats gets to contemplate life and death. Earlier in life, he has pursued the spiritual, but as he is older, approaching death, he is searching for something else, too. He realizes that we need both soul and body to overcome aging and death, and eventually, as evidenced in the dance and dancer metaphor of the poem, he is reaching the ultimate Reality through a unity of being－the harmonious union of body and soul. He realizes that “life is not a mere image.”

• Shin, Wonkyung(Hanyang University)