Personal Loss

Yeat's wrote this piece of poetry as a declaration of unrequited love. Throughout, his tone is one of dissatisfaction and disillusionment. The subject of his love is Maud Gonne; the swans at Coole number 9 and 50............ a rather odd number for a group of birds that's mentioned in the third stanza as being there in pairs. There was one swan left alone........... and that would be our poet!