Streams and Rivers from The Wild Swans at Coole by W. B. Yeats

Water often carries a quiet magic in literature, symbolizing life, change, and sometimes, the elusive dream of immortality. In the classic novel Tuck Everlasting, water acts as a fountain of youth, granting eternal life through its slow, cold, and steady drip. This idea of water holding the power of forever living finds a poetic echo in W. B. Yeats’s poem The Wild Swans at Coole, where streams and rivers reflect the passage of time and the tension between permanence and change.

Streams and Rivers in Yeats’s The Wild Swans at Coole

Yeats’s poem captures a different but related relationship with water. The water mirrors the sky and carries the swans, creatures that seem untouched by time. The poem’s narrator watches the swans year after year, noting how they remain unwearied and passionate, while he himself feels the weight of change and aging.

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

Connecting the Two Views of Water

I love how this photo feels like a secret, as if you’ve stumbled upon it and, in that moment, the stream carries you back a hundred years—or forward into the future. To me, the poem complements this photo because the water, and everything on or around it, seems untouched by time.