Discuss ways in which Yeats presents his emotions in The Cold Heaven.

In 1912, Yeats was turning away from his nationalistic writing and back
to his original romantic style, resulting in poetry which was far more focused
on his emotions and the one than the thoughts and feelings of the country.
The Cold Heaven explores Yeats feelings of fear, confusion and regret
through an unnamed narrator.
The fear that is described, the fear at which the narrator cried and
trembled and rocked to and fro, is almost secondary to this poem. It is a
necessary response to the awful and rook delighting afterlife, and the
subsequent epiphany. The fear is there only in order to give way to the
confusion. As every casual thought of that and this vanished, narrator
cannot process the world he sees before him, and how different it is to what
he thought it would be; the cold heaven is not the paradise that the bible
speaks of (very similarly so, in Revelations 21:1). This is perhaps an analogy
for Yeats love for Maud Gonne, and the effect it might have on his poetry.
Just as Keats sacrificed his poetry for Fanny Brawne, would Yeats have
suffered without the sadness that he exploited?
The narrator has nothing left in the confusion of the deathbed, but
memories and the way in which he clings to these is echoed in the metre:
the first pair of stanzas alternate between alexandrines and fourteeners, and
then begins to decay as the memories begin to slip away into oblivion. This
sense of impending doom is reinforced with the use of caesurae, most
notably in the ninth line, after which the poem begins to spiral and speed
towards it rhetorical end another sign of the narrators confusion, as the
question remains unanswered.
The emotion most felt in this poem though, is not confusion, but a
definite, certain, and unavoidable regret; regret for love crossed long ago, or,

specifically, Maud Gonne. The pairs turbulent relationship was, for Yeats, a
failure, and in The Cold Heaven, he suggests that this failure was his own
fault. The narrator took all the blame out of sense and reason, implying
that to accept his position as the cause of his own loss is logical and
sensible. In contrast to The Cold Heaven, Broken Dreams suggests that
Maud is the one who will regret not accepting Yeats proposals, and that it
will be her fault for failing to do so. However, his later poem, The Cat and
the Moon, suggests that it is neither partys fault, as the pair, no matter how
linked, can never be together, just as the cat, though his eyes might mirror
the waxing and waning of the moon, can never hope to have his adoration
requited. This constant reallocation of blame further supports the confusion
in this poem, as it bleeds into Yeats life.
The less likely source of this regret is Ireland perhaps the hot blood of
youth gains its heat not from lust, but from a different, more aggressive
passion for a republic. If this is the case then Yeats lament is for his own
ideals and the conviction he once had.
Ultimately, The Cold Heaven describes the turmoil and discomfiture of
Yeatss life through a parable of death. Fortunately for Yeats, he had several
years left to avoid living the life (and death) of regret that the narrator of the
poem must suffer.