Sailing to Byzantium

“Sailing to Byzantium” was written by the Irish writer William Butler Yeats in 1926; it was later published in The Tower (1928)—one of his most influential and widely read collections. The poem straddles the partition between Victorian sensibilities and the discontent of the early 20th century; arguably, it is Romantic in form and Modernist in content. Yeats’s body of work is informed by antiquated writers like John Keats and William Blake as much as it is by contemporaneous figures such as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Known for his extravagant symbolism and admiration of tradition, Yeats has an eye to the past in “Sailing to Byzantium,” which consists of four stanzas, composed in ottava rima—eight-line stanzas written in 10 or 11 syllables with an abababcc rhyme scheme.

While Yeats’s early works (1865-1910) are mythical and imaginative, focusing on longing and love much like his Romantic and Symbolist predecessors, his middle works (1914-21) explore Realism and political issues in a divided Ireland and a world left in shambles by WWI. “Sailing to Byzantium” is part of a shift from his middle work to late work (1921-39) and is one of the many poems to reflect on his own life and poetic vocation using spiritual and historical tropes. The poem was largely the product of Yeats’s anxieties about old age. At this time in his life, he had all but withdrawn from the public, retreating to the collection’s titular tower, the Ballylee Castle, which he purchased in 1917. The poem muses on Yeats’s isolation and distrust of the modern world. The speaker disparages his corporeal existence while yearning for the splendor of a great beyond. He decides to travel to Byzantium—a city known for its golden mosaics. Here, the speaker hopes to better understand the relationship between artifice and eternity, so he can make him as timeless as a stony monument, frozen in space and time.

Poet Biography

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland 13 June 1865 to Susan Mary Pollexfen and John Butler Yeats, whose political alignments were oppositional. Susan and her family believed Ireland should remain a part of the United Kingdom and be governed by the British Crown, while John sided with Ireland’s Nationalists and Home Rulers. Yeats derived a great deal of artistic inspiration from his parents’ contradictory views, their vested interest in the arts (what John called “the religion of art”), and their travels between London, Dublin, and Sligo. Yeats’s family may have raised him as Anglo-Irish Protestant and member of the Protestant Ascendency, but John was skeptical of institutionalized religion and spiritualism. Nevertheless, William grew up internalizing Irish folktales and aspects of the occult, which eventually led him to the study of theosophy, mysticism, and various spiritualisms from all over the world.

Initially homeschooled by his mother (who relayed cultural education via folktales) and father (who offered more formal courses in history and science), Yeats began writing poetry in 1880 at the age of 17 while attending Erasmus Smith High School in Dublin. The school was in proximity to his father’s studio, which was a hub for the city’s most prominent artists and writers. The encouragement he received from his milieu led to the publication of his first poem in 1885, “The Isle of Statues,” which appeared in the Dublin University Review. In the same year, Yeats helped found the Dublin Hermetic Order. In 1886, his first pamphlet, Mosada: A Dramatic Poem, was released. He participated in a seance for the first time, which intensified his occult fascinations.

Yeats met Maud Gonne, a passionate Irish Nationalist, in 1889, and quickly became infatuated by her charm and blunt disposition. His detachment from nationalist sentiments made him an unsuitable romantic partner in her eyes, and his love for her remained unrequited. She soon became one of his most significant poetic muses. Yeats remained a bachelor until 1917, when he married George Hyde.

While in London in 1890, Yeats found community by starting with Ernst Rhys the Rhymer’s Club—a group of poets who regularly gathered to share their work in a tavern on Fleet Street. This collective of artists were later dubbed the “Tragic Generation.” Concurrently, he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and acted as a recruiter for them for many years.

In 1894, Yeats’s ties to Nationalism grew stronger and he began to focus on composing dramatic works at the behest of Lady Gregory, to whom he was introduced by a mutual friend. By 1899, Yeats became the primary playwright of the Irish Literary Theatre.

Yeats encountered Ezra Pound during a visit to London in 1908. Pound’s Modernist sensibilities led him to edit, without consent, the Victorian flavor out of a poem Yeats had submitted to Poetry Magazine. As a result, their friendship was marred for nearly a decade.

In 1911, Yeats was introduced to his future wife, with whom he raised two children. During their marriage, they participated in occult rituals such as seances and automatic writing, in which they attempted to become vessels for the will of supernatural beings. It was during this time that Yeats encountered trances, as well as the mystical framework for his cyclical philosophy of history. Their seances were of particular interest in 1912, when they claimed to be visited by a spirited named Leo Africanus, whom Yeats considered to be his “anti-self."

Political turbulence erupted over the next several years, which led to the commencement of World War 1 in 1914. At this time, a revolutionary nationalist movement began to emerge in Ireland, comprising mostly lower-middle- and working-class Roman Catholics. The movement became infamous for the Easter Uprising of 1916, which inspired Yeats’s "Easter, 1916," in which he reluctantly praised the beautiful violence of the revolutionaries.

In 1923, already a member of the first Irish Senate, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and used the occasion of his acceptance lecture to declare his allegiance to Irish culture and its independence. In 1928, he retired from the Senate due to his poor health.

Yeats passed away on 28 January 1939, after quietly composing some of his most important works later in life, including A Vision (1925), The Tower (1928), and The Winding Stair (1929).

Poem Text

Yeats, William Butler. “Sailing to Byzantium.” 1933. The Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem begins with observations from an aged voice who feels displaced by society, bemoaning the fact that his surroundings are “no country for old men” (Line 1). Casting his gaze outward and into the vast world, he yearns for the earthly delights of younger individuals who retain the privilege of holding each other and demonstrating love like “birds in the trees” (Line 2) performing their songs to attract mates. However, this privilege is naive as youthful life is oblivious to the inevitability of its decay. Similarly, birds may sing, but they do so without knowledge that they, like young people are, “dying generations” (Line 3). Salmon and mackerels, birds, fish, and humans are incapable of escaping the cycles of nature, where everything “is begotten, born, and dies” (Line 5-6). To be encompassed by the natural world is to produce and reproduce its terrestrial rhythm and “sensual music” (Line 7) toiling while one “neglect[s] / Monuments of unageing intellect” (Line 8). In other words, the corporeality of nature—according to Yeats’s speaker—prevents human beings, especially the young, from taking seriously the life of the mind and heeding spiritual matters.

In the second stanza, the speaker continues his diatribe against the meekness of old age, which makes a person into a “paltry thing” (Line 9) much like “[a] tattered coat upon a stick” (Line 10). For the speaker, decay and degeneration turn humans into something vile and useless, and this is inescapable. But then, a caveat: “[U]nless / Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress” (Lines 10-12). The song of the soul is at odds with the volume of nature’s song, and the speaker encourages the soul to make its song known. For every bodily imperfection, the speaker demands more introspection and for the soul to become more conscious of itself by “studying / Monuments of its own magnificence” (Line 13-14). This studiousness can only be attained in the city of Byzantium, so he sets out to experience it for himself (Lines 15-16).

In the third stanza, the speaker glosses over his travels and arrives in the holy city (17). He bears witness to monuments to the intellect in the form of “sages standing in God’s holy fire / As in the gold mosaic of a wall” (Lines 17-18). He calls upon the sages of the monument, asking them to “perne in a gyre, / And be the singing-masters of [his] soul” (Lines 19-20). The speaker yearns to be possessed of their wisdom and amplify the volume of his soul by overtaking his earthly existence, which is “sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal” (Lines 21-22). This transformation would necessitate the sages’ consumption of his heart, so reason can triumph over the peril of emotions (Line 22). He realizes the only way to allow the soul to actualize and become self-aware is to create eternal art (Lines 23-24).

In the fourth and final stanza, the speaker pledges that “[o]nce out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing” (Lines 25-26), comparing his new metaphysical being to the work of Grecian goldsmiths, infamous for creating golden birds. He wants to be both the goldsmith creating work as timeless as the Ancient Greeks and the bird “[o]f hammered gold and gold enamelling” (Line 28). The poem concludes with an image of this artificial bird rousing an emperor, elevating the status of artifice to something powerful and commandeering. The speaker hopes that becoming a golden bird will grant the ability to bring prophetic meaning to the birdsong of the first stanza: “Or set upon a golden bough to sing / To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come” (Lines 30-32).