This paper employs the method of influence study to investigate the impact of William Blake's poetry on W.B. Yeats's poetic works. By analyzing the imagery and themes in their poetic works, it reveals that Blake's mysticism exerted a significant influence on Yeats's poetry writing. Yeats's works were profoundly inspired by Blake's ideas of "inner vision" and "symbolic mystical experience." Building upon these influences, Yeats developed his own distinctive poetic style. Throughout the discussion, this paper compares the poetic works of William Blake and Yeats and explores the different connotations of symbolism in their poetry.

The paper argues that while impermanence is an inherent aspect of the spiritual journey, refuge can still be achieved by remaining attuned to the present moment and cultivating strong faith. Through vivid natural imagery, such as snow, water, and light, and symbols like the Monk’s bell, Seven Lakes Canto reflects Zen ideals of simplicity, mindfulness, nothingness, wabi-sabi and impermanence. The poem, particularly the section on “Eight Views of Xiao Xiang River”, underscores the transient beauty of life and the importance of being present in the moment, while also addressing the inevitability of suffering and the need for unwavering faith in the Buddha’s teachings.

The lyric mode is characterized by Aristotle as that mode of address which occurs in the first person. This has led to much discussion regarding the lyric “I”, across time and space. There is a common conception that lyric poetry is personal, intimate, and expressive of its poet’s sentiments. Forms such as ‘confessional poetry’ have been considered as ‘natural’ developments of such a mode, and critics have read these poems as expressions of the personal experiences of the poet. This is especially so in case of poetry which bears the name of its poet within the verse, or where there are actual parallels between certain elements in the poetry (such as certain practices, beliefs, etc.) and the poet’s life. The myth of directness or ‘confession’ has flourished particularly in the lyric mode, in a genre that most explicitly fulfils the requirement of being spoken or written in the first person and epitomizes the ‘lyric’. This genre will be called ‘personal poetry’ for the purpose of this paper, which aims to interrogate the idea of the ‘personal’, in the sense of autobiographical, in readings of such poetry. A set of poems which at first would appear to fulfil the ‘criteria’ of ‘personal’ or ‘confessional’ poetry, written by women of from different spatio-temporal contexts will be read together, in order to identify different ways of dramatizing the lyric “I”, all of which challenge a biographical reading that tries to invisibilize poiesis. Female poets who are said to have led ‘unconventional’ lives have been chosen in order to highlight and counter the tendency of literary criticism to consider women’s poetry ‘particular’, ‘confessional’ documents and men’s poetry ‘universal’ literary exemplars. A focus on poiesis and the intentionality which drives the process, the locatedness of such poiesis in a chronotope with its own structure of feeling and regulative beliefs, along with interpretation (always a part of the textualization process), and an understanding of how the lyrical “I” along with the poetics of the genre change with time and space, will provide an alternative reading to the aforementioned ‘personal’, ‘confessional’, or ‘autobiographical’ perspectives. The poems assembled for this paper are those of Sappho, Akka Mahadevi, Kamala Das, and Celia Martínez.

This research explores the motifs of death and rebirth in the poetry of Jibanananda Das and Ko Un, focusing on how these themes address existential dilemmas, cultural memory, and the cyclical nature of life. Jibanananda Das’s Bonolata Sen and Akashlina integrate modernist existentialism and Indian philosophical traditions to depict death as a transformative passage, linking personal mortality to collective historical consciousness through evocative natural imagery. In contrast, Ko Un’s Ten Thousand Lives, influenced by Buddhist principles of samsara, portrays death and rebirth as communal processes, reframing personal suffering within a larger spiritual and interconnected cycle.

By employing a comparative literary framework, this study situates the poets’ works within their distinct socio-historical and philosophical contexts—Das’s engagement with modernism and India’s post-colonial trauma, and Ko Un’s Buddhist meditation shaped by personal experiences of war and imprisonment. The juxtaposition of Das’s naturalistic mysticism with Ko Un’s spiritual and communal perspective on life, death, and rebirth reveals both shared concerns about transformation and renewal, as well as contrasting approaches to mortality. This study ultimately contributes to a deeper understanding of how death and rebirth serve as metaphors for continuity, resilience, and hope, offering a rich comparative perspective on two distinct cultural traditions.