"The Wild Swans at Coole" Summary

"The Wild Swans at Coole" conveys a middle aged man's awareness on the process of life. The opening image is the narrator admiring the "autumn beauty" (1) as he watches the swans in the lake he has been visiting for the past nineteen years. The swans begin to represent something beautiful he can hold onto. As the poem continues, the swans "all suddenly mount and scatter" (10) before he had finished counting. This brings attention to how change is starting to happen by mentioning the painful process of realizing that things change as we grow older and that they'll never be the same. The narrator continues to illustrates how "all's changed" (15) from the "first time on this shore" (16). This change affects him emotionally and physically as the speaker states "my heart is sore" (14). The forth image portrays the speakers realization that the swans are started to grow older, "unwearied still, lover by lover" (19) and how they're going on their own paths to adulthood "wander where they will" (23), assumingly comparing this development to himself. At the end the speaker is looking ahead and wondering if he will "awake some day to find they have flown away," (30) relating to his initatal unwillingness to accept change.