the wild swans analysis

It seems that the swans are in some way identified with what might be called the numerical time-dimension of the speaker's life or person; by reducing this temporal meaning, which is the primary and ordering one of the poem to sheer quantity, or number, the poet seems to have made possible the presentation of his main concrete meanings, especially those of autumn and the swans, and water also, in their full and pure literality. If the swans are seen as a kind of "quantitative" projection of the speaker's years, the poem seems to yield the princi...