William Butler Yeats, the esteemed poet of the 20th century, was in love with the Irish nationalist Maud Gonne; her poem “The Two Trees” was originally written for her. Gonne was very devoted to some rather uncompromising ideologies, but in this poem Yeats persuades her to perceive the world with more gray areas and fewer patches of black and white. In "The Two Trees", Yeats uses Edenic imagery, enjambment and phonetics to create a reconciliation between the two seemingly disjointed stanzas, suggesting that life cannot be divided so neatly and that opposites like the “good” and “evil” are actually linked. no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Yeats uses Edenic imagery to highlight the duality of life; by comparing the Tree of Life with the Tree of Knowledge, he shows that “good” and “evil” are linked. The poem begins with the statement “Beloved, look into your own heart,/The sacred tree grows there”; (1-2) a reference to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, the tree of ignorance and the "inner tree". truth." He goes on to illustrate this tree as a tree with "holy branches" (3) springing "from joy" and bearing "trembling flowers" (4). Even the "changing colors of its fruits / have endowed the stars of a joyful light” (5-6) These images evoke a pleasant atmosphere, but also seem ephemeral; the frequent use of verbs ending in -ing gives the impression of constant movement. here, it seems, and this feeling proves true in the second stanza, when the poem radically changes tone and imagery Here, a “fatal image grows/That the stormy night receives” (25-26). ) contrasts sharply with the “sacred tree” of the first stanza This tree, the Tree of Knowledge, has “roots half hidden under the snow, broken branches and blackened leaves” (27-28). The disjunction between these two trees seems obvious from the contrasting descriptions, but the structural parallels between the stanzas - for example, the first stanza ends with "Beloved, look into your own heart" while the second stanza ends with “Look no”. more in the bitter glass”--binds the elements together. The parallels between the first and second stanza reflect the parallels between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. From a Kabbalistic perspective, these two trees are actually identical and only differ in the perspective from which they are viewed. Through these Edenic images, Yeats suggests that nothing is truly purely “good” or purely “evil”; on the contrary, even the most just ideals have setbacks. Yeats does not use enjambment often, and most of the lines in this poem are finished; thus, he uses enjambment to inject stress into this poem. This is first seen in lines 5 and 6 ("The changing colors of its fruit/Have endowed the stars with joyous light"), when Yeats employs enjambment to create tension in a poem that is otherwise is going very smoothly and pleasantly at this point. The reader is forced to move on to the next line; this tension is reinforced by the word "endowed" in line 6. Although this word can mean simply "a gift", it can also be defined as "an asset awarded to a widow after the death of her husband", adding a current of sadness underlying a feeling of sadness. charming image that suggests vitality. This use of opposites creates tension in the poem early on. Later, in the second stanza, Yeats uses enjambment again to avoid overwhelming the reader. Since the.