Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay
Form and Meter
"The Song of Wandering Aengus" is a lyric poem. It's told in the first person (through the perspective of Aengus). Lyrics, as our wonderful lit glossary tells us, are usually written in the first p...
Speaker
In Celtic mythology, the speaker of this poem, Aengus, is a god. But in Yeats' poem, he comes across as very mortal. For one thing, he gets old, just like we do (17). For another, he's never able t...
Setting
The main setting of this poem is the "hazel wood" in which our speaker goes fishing. This setting presents nature as a major theme in the poem. We get a sense of the beauty and the magic of this na...
Sound Check
"The Song of Wandering Aengus" is called a "song" for a reason: it sounds like one. In fact, it's so sing-songy, it could be a children's lullaby. This has a lot to do with the meter and rhyme sche...
What's Up With the Title?
The title "The Song of Wandering Aengus" tells us a couple of important things about this poem. First of all, it tells us who the speaker is: it's—wait for it—Aengus. Who's Aengus? He's a god o...
Calling Card
Yeats was a big Irish nationalist. You see, he started writing at a time when Ireland was still a British colony (it became independent in 1922), and those Brits sure weren't treating the Irish ver...
Tough-o-Meter
The "lullaby" sound of this poem may make us think that it's easy-peasy, but the references to Celtic mythology are pretty obscure for most of us readers. Don't even stress, though. We're here to h...
Trivia
The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe got the title for his famous book Things Fall Apart from Yeats' Poem "The Second Coming." It's a poem about the arrival of a scary monster (run for your live...
Steaminess Rating
Aengus may want to have some sexy times with the "glimmering girl" he meets in the hazel wood, but considering that she disappears into thin air right after he meets her, he doesn't get any. That m...
Allusions
Aengus (title): Aengus is a god of love and beauty in Celtic mythology. In one myth, the inspiration for Yeats' poem, Aengus falls in love with a girl he sees in a dream. He goes looking for her an...