The Wild Swans at Coole

The swans that the poet/speaker watches along the lake in the park symbolize the power of otherwise unremarkable objects to spark the poet’s imagination. These “brilliant creatures” (Line 13), at once “mysterious” and “beautiful” (Line 26), are common swans that live in this park and in many other parks in Ireland and around the world. They are swans—that is critical to the argument of the poem. This is no lofty metaphysical meditation. The swans are there, on that lake, and the poet strolls along that lake and sees the birds.

Yet, without warning and without the poet’s intrusive interpretation, they effortlessly become the occasion of the poet’s ruminations and, in turn, create the conditions under which the poem itself comes into being. As such, the swans of Coole Park symbolize the poet’s muse, a term that refers to the interactive spark between the artist and the real-time world. Suddenly, quietly, that world or some element of it inspires the artist to create, to fashion an object that both reflects that interaction and elevates it to the status of art.

In turn, the artist, driven by this unanticipated reaction to the muse, transforms (or perhaps distills more accurately reflects the interaction) that same real-time presence into the gift of insight.