Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay
Form and Meter
Eight lines of iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ABABABCC? Sounds like ottava rima to Shmoop. But before you go hunting for your Italian dictionary, we'll give you the breakdown.We've alread...
Speaker
Our speaker is a poet. Yeats is a poet. Our speaker is a man nearing the end of his career. Yeats is nearing the end of his career. Our speaker spent a good deal of his life invested in Irish mytho...
Setting
The Yellow Brick Road, a.k.a. A Poet's Memory LaneYou could think of Yeats as Dorothy in this particular journey. As we travel along in his wicker basket, we get firsthand accounts of the wonders o...
What's Up With the Title?
"The Circus Animals' Desertion" is a poem about writing poetry, so what in the world are circus animals doing in it? As it turns out, there actually aren't any. Nope, those circus animals in the ti...
Calling Card
Sure, Yeats may be charting a new poetic territory in this poem (someone get this man a map of the heart), but that doesn't mean he avoids shout-outs to his old works. Poem and myth and plays all w...
Tough-o-Meter
You may get sucked in by the easy rhyme and magical language of Yeats's poem, but that doesn't mean his references to other poetic works and Irish myth won't throw you for a bit of a loop. Don't wo...
Trivia
When it comes to using Irish mythological figures, Yeats pulls out the big guns: Cuchulain is one of the most well loved figures in the Irish canon. And he was pretty kick butt. In one myth, he eve...
Steaminess Rating
This poem sticks to the straight and narrow. It's concerned with Yeats's literary and imaginative visions, not his sexual ones.
Allusions
Cuchulain (2.18)Oisin (2.2)The Countess Cathleen (2.10)