An Analysis of Yeats' "sailing to Byzantium"

An Analysis of Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium"

William Butler Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium" is both a mystical and deeply personal poem. It is narrated by a man who in his old age wants to transcend his worldly desires, to let go of his body and immortalize himself by becoming one with what is eternal--his soul. He finds himself in a culture or country where the value and beauty of the soul, of God, of the spirit, is ignored for the immediate needs and desires of the senses. He escapes to a mythological version of the city of Byzantium. Yeats explains: "Byzantium was the centre of European civilization and the source of its spiritual philosophy, so I symbolize the search for the spiritual life by a journey to that city. (Jaffares pg.217) He expresses a desire to be an object, free of the burdens and meaningless daily toil of being a human. But he does not want to be just any object. He wants to be beautiful art, a representation, or a monument to all that is eternal--a physical reminder of the spiritual, or of the soul.

Borrowing words from his poem "Byzantium," in the first stanza we are presented with the "mire" and "fury" of sensual life--all that is hostile to eternal truth--a vision of fleeting corporeal pre-occupation and frenzy. It is a state of being that leaves old men like Yeats feeling rejected, useless, or empty.

Yeats is able to create a feeling or image of vitality, youth and beauty juxtaposed with a feeling of impermanence, death, and insignificance. He does this within a single line: "The young in one another's arms," are dying as their song is being sung. By referring to their activities being carried out "all summer long" he is again referencing the impermanence of youth and futility in finding meaning in sensual pre-occupations. He is pointing to death and impermanence. He describes the sensual desires as a kind of "siren," a music that "catches" us and sends us on a road that is a dead end, while we neglect the immortality of the intellect and spirit.

I

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

--Those dying generations--at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

The first line gives us the principal focus in the frame of reference of the poet--he is an old man. It almost seems irrelevant to try to relate what follows to a specific time, place or country because his descriptions are both universal and metaphorical for something common to all countries or to all life on earth. His dissatisfaction is with life being completely engulfed in sensual pleasures, corporeal pursuits and struggles, and a constant focus on things that are impermanent and fleeting - whatever is "begotten, born and dies." That is what we commend, instead of dedicating ourselves to that which is eternal and timeless, to "monuments of unaging intellect." In the second stanza, Yeats moves on to describe why old age has no place in the country he's left, and what he needs to resurrect his existence.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

In a world where the life of the body and its senses are the only focus, old people