Sailing to Byzantium

From the earliest of his poems to the last ones he wrote, William Butler Yeats frequently dwelt on the subject of growing old. Perhaps his most famous poem that addresses aging is “Sailing to Byzantium.” For anyone who is interested in getting to know Yeats’s poetry, this poem is among the dozen or so that is essential to read. It was written in 1926, when Yeats was sixty-one. It is challenging intellectually, but also powerfully poignant.

                 Sailing to Byzantium

                                     1
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.

                                      2
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.

                                       3
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
and be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

                                       4
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enameling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

In this poem, Yeats rejects the sensuality of sexual passion and yearns to journey away from all things physical to a realm of abstract, idealized artistic beauty. Stanza 1 snaps our attention with the curt statement “That is no country for men. Ireland is “no country for old men” such as Yeats, since he sees the passionate young in “one another’s arms and hears birdsongs joyfully celebrating their fertility and believes he is too old and infirm to participate in that world of sensual fulfillment. The one quality he still possesses that should “commend” him to his country, his creative prowess, is of little value where “all neglect / Monuments of unageing intellect.”

In stanza 2, Yeats fashions a distressing image of himself: “An aged man is but a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick.” Yet, within this “paltry thing” still exists the soul, and if that “Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing, / For every tatter in its mortal dress,” it can transport him to a realm where “studying / Monuments of its own magnificence” is the true music to replace the music of sensuality. As stanza 2 closes, Yeats announces that he has actually already left Ireland: “And therefore I have sailed the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium.” Why Byzantium? In A Vision, (1925) a book he published shortly before he wrote the poem, Yeats revealed his belief that artists were truly valued there: “I think that if I could be given a month of antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia...I think that early Byzantium, maybe never before or since recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one, that architects and artificers…spoke to the multitude…”

In stanza 3, Yeats does not just imagine himself roaming the ancient city; he locates himself within Byzantium’s holiest structure, the Church of the Hagia Sophia. Once there, the speaker invokes the sages to leave “God’s” purifying “fire,” beseeching them to be the “singing-masters of my soul” and “Consume my heart away.” Of course, old age has withered him and would be enough to justify his request of the sages, but it is not old age or encroaching mortality only that compels his need to escape the physical world; he calls for a spiritual transformation to achieve artistic: immortality: “…and gather me / Into the artifice of eternity.” His request flows also from the anguish he feels in stanza 1 and 2, his alienation from the fertile world of vigorous sexuality. Though his heart is “fastened to a dying animal” it is not his age or fear of death that makes him ill; it is the combination of having a heart made “sick” by the “desire” that can no longer be fulfilled.

Stanza 4 is curious in that Yeats seems to have moved back in time to Ireland and is once again imagining himself out of his physical body and transformed into art. In the first two lines he employs the future tense verb to indicates what he intends to do: “Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing” [.] He continues in this future frame with what he envisions to be one possible “form” of existence he could assume: “But such form as Grecian goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold and gold enameling” [.] As a work of gold sculpture, Yeats will be transformed into an aesthetic untouched by deprivations of old age. But this “artifice of eternity” takes away his poetic voice making him a static figure, seen but never heard. His second idea of a bird set upon a “golden bough to sing / To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come” immortalizes Yeats’s poetry through both time and space.