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Sailing to Byzantium. By William Butler Yeats. 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.
“Sailing to Byzantium,” by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), reflects on the difficulty of keeping one’s soul alive in a fragile, failing human body. The speaker, an old man, leaves behind the country of the young for a visionary quest to Byzantium, the ancient city that was a major seat of early Christianity.
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come. To the holy city of Byzantium. 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.
Written in 1926 (when Yeats was 60 or 61), "Sailing to Byzantium" is Yeats' definitive statement about the agony of old age and the imaginative and spiritual work required to remain a vital individual even when the heart is "fastened to a dying animal" (the body).
‘Sailing to Byzantium’ by W.B. Yeats tells the story of a man who is traveling to a new country, Byzantium, a spiritual resort to him. Byzantium was an ancient Greek colony later named Constantinople, which is situated where Istanbul, Turkey, now stands.
Sailing to Byzantium, poem by William Butler Yeats, published in his collection October Blast in 1927 and considered one of his masterpieces. For Yeats, ancient Byzantium was the purest embodiment of transfiguration into the timelessness of art. Written when Yeats was in his 60s, the poem.
A summary of “Sailing to Byzantium” in William Butler Yeats's Yeats's Poetry. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of Yeats's Poetry and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
Sailing to Byzantium. William Butler Yeats. Track 1 on The Tower. This is regarded as one of the outstanding poems of the Twentieth Century. Yeats addresses the disappointments of growing...
Sailing to Byzantium. In early Irish tradition there is a type of narrative known as imram, a sea voyage in which a hero or saint sails to the West to find the earthly paradise. Yeats adapts this notion in the next poem, except he abandons Ireland not for the West by for Byzantium and the East.
William Butler Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" is a complex and evocative poem that explores themes of mortality, aging, and the search for eternal life through...