The poem is simple. Very short. I love it! Rossco and Chris taught this poem a couple weeks ago, and I think they did a very good job in finding the meaning behind it. I think the poem is basically an analogy, using a tree, to the cycle of life. "Through all the lying days of my youth... I may wither into the truth." This is the cycle of how people live. I thought of the "root" in the first line to kind of be the life its self; it is the actual existence, the tangible body. The leaves he talks about are the experiences Yeats has gone through. Each experience and part of him buds to form the adornment to who he is, but overtime it withers away and he is again "naked" (ok not literally, that'd be gross, but figuratively naked.)He talks about how he has to wither into truth, maybe the leaves and flowers that covered him up must fall, leaving him exposed to the entire world. I like the line about a lying youth. I feel like youth in general is a lie to the world, but it is necessary! Parents cannot expose their children to the horrors and stresses of the world, so they let them sway in the gentle breeze. It could just be a lie?
This is my take on this poem :)
<3
I think that's a part of youth that you don't appreciate until you're older--the swaying part. :)
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