Get hundreds more LitCharts at

www.litcharts.com Sailing to Byzantium

In the first stanza, the speaker vividly evokes the beautiful
SUMMARY world of the young. The world is described through images
of natural fertility and bounty: young people embracing,
The speaker introduces readers to a world that has no room singing birds, vast schools of fish. This world is intensely
in it for the elderly. It's a world in which young lovers focused on material pleasures and the creation of even
embrace under trees full of singing birds (who seem unaware more new life.
of their own mortality), the waters swarm with fish, and But, as the speaker hints when he calls the singing birds
every living thing—whether human, fish, or bird—is born and “those dying generations” and observes that the happy
then dies. Everything in that country is so caught up in the young “neglect / Monuments of unageing intellect,” this
moment that it can pay no attention to the things that might world is also limited by
outlive the flesh. its inability to accept the realities of aging. That is, the young
An old man in this world is nothing but a skinny, ratty old are so self-absorbed, so wrapped up in these physical, bodily
scarecrow, unless he can keep his soul alive, vital, and singing delights, that they can't yet appreciate their own mortality,
within his failing, worn out body. No one can teach the soul to and certainly can't achieve the kind of spiritual
do this: the person who wants to keep their soul alive has to transcendence the speaker longs for.
figure it out through their own study. For this reason, the Indeed, an old man with a failing body can’t even pretend to
speaker has taken a voyage across the ocean to the ancient fit in there. The poem's very first line, “That is no country for
holy city of Byzantium. old men,” lets readers know that the speaker is totally at odds
The speaker addresses Byzantium's long-dead wise men and with this world. Even the word “that” separates the speaker
saints, who are now caught up in the glorious fire of God, from the country: it’s something over there, something he
which is like the beautiful golden tiling that decorates doesn’t belong to.
Byzantine churches. He asks them to emerge from this fire, The speaker then focuses on the failures of his aging body,
whirling in spirals like the bobbin of a spinning-wheel, and to which he describes as “a tattered coat”: not the substance of
teach his soul to sing. He wants them to burn up his mortal, his real self, but just a garment he’s wearing. The only way to
fleshly heart, which is tethered to his failing body and can't salvage such a garment, in turn, is for the soul to “clap its
fathom or accept its own mortality, and to take him up into hands and sing.” The soul itself thus seems to have a
their everlasting world of art. body—but a different kind of body, one that can’t fade and
When he's left his body behind, the speaker says, he won't weaken over time.
take up a mortal physical form again. Instead, he'll be a Because there is no “singing school,” however, no one to
beautiful piece of golden art, something that metal workers teach the speaker's soul how to achieve such vibrancy, the
in ancient Greece might have made to hang in an emperor's
speaker makes an imagined spiritual journey to the long-lost
bedroom. Or he'll be a golden bird placed in a golden tree,
holy city of Byzantium. He's making this journey with his
where he, like the sages, can teach people his eternal and
otherworldly wisdom—his transcendent understanding of mind, not his body; he envisions leaving the body behind
the past, present, and future. forever, in fact, and the power of his imagination helps him to
move beyond his physical frailty. This again emphasizes the
separation between the speaker's mortal body and his
THEMES transcendent soul.
Byzantium ceased to exist long ago (it is now modern-day
OLD AGE AND MORTALITY Istanbul), and the "sages," or wise men, the speaker reaches
out to are actually mosaics—real, famous artworks crafted
The poem is, at least in part, about the difficulties of from many tiny, often gilded (gold-covered) tiles. As such, the
old age. To the speaker, the inevitable failure of the aging speaker is basically imagining traveling to a long-dead holy
body presents a choice: the elderly can either fade into husks city and talking to mosaic icons on a wall. But that's the point:
of their former selves, or learn to escape the physical these sages have transcended old age and mortality through
limitations of old age by beautifying their souls—and, becoming the materials of imagination and of art. They have
eventually, upon dying, becoming something that isn’t tied to left their frail, physical bodies behind.
the human body at all. The poem thus implies a separation The speaker intends to one day join them—and when he
between the body and soul, and presents old age as both a does, he’ll leave behind his body forever, and “never take /
burden and an opportunity for a kind of spiritual My bodily form from any natural thing.” In teaching his soul
transcendence—a chance to leave the earthly world, and all to imagine beyond the limits of his body, and eventually to
its limitations, behind. leave it, he’ll learn to overcome mortality and old age.
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one of the mosaics in which he sees the sages. But he may
Part of this transcendence will come through the art he also take the form of a golden bird, though he doesn’t say so
makes. Indeed, this poem itself is both a kind of song and a directly: in his other vision of his immortality, he sits on a
kind of mosaic: it’s musical, and it’s made of many little bough and sings, just as the living birds in the first stanza do.
pieces (words, that is) put together. The art that the speaker The mortal body is left behind in the transition into
leaves behind is another way of surviving past the limits of immortality, but the artistic body remains: the speaker wishes
his mortal body, and, like the golden bird he imagines to become art himself, to “sing to lords and ladies of
becoming, will still “sing” to later generations and teach Byzantium”—in short, to become a piece of art that might
them the wisdom he himself has learned. help other mortals to become a piece of art. In this role, he
would “sing” of “what is past, or passing, or to
Where this theme appears in the poem: come”—recording what was past, existing in the present, and
enduring into the future.
• Lines 1-8
• Lines 9-16
Where this theme appears in the poem:
• Lines 17-24
• Lines 25-32 • Lines 10-16
• Lines 17-21
• Lines 23-24
THE POWER OF ART • Lines 25-32
Closely related to the poem's ideas about
aging,
mortality, and the soul is its treatment of art. In LINE-BY-LINE ANALYSIS
the second half of the poem, the speaker reaches out to the
world of art—to Byzantine mosaics—for answers to the LINE 1
struggles of old age and death. Art, here, is presented as a
That is no ... for old men.
pathway to immortality. Art, the poem argues, can represent
and preserve bodies that never change, and point to a bigger, The first line of the poem creates an immediate sense of the
transcendent reality: not just the reality of lives now speaker's separation from the place he's about to describe.
vanished, but the reality of some different world beyond our This alienation is evident from the very first word, in fact: a
own. powerful, dismissive "That." The word "That" gives readers a
The elderly speaker, having left behind the world of the sense that the speaker is already standing at a remove from
young which no longer has room for him in his frailty, goes to whatever he's describing. While his body might be in the
seek spiritual rebirth in the ancient city of Byzantium—an country he's about to describe, he feels far away from it.
ancient holy city that is now long-dead. He begins his third The sounds of this line are similarly telling. The sharp /t/
stanza by invoking “sages standing in God’s holy fire / As in sound of "That" start readers off with a bang, but then the
the gold mosaic of a wall.” Byzantium was famous for its vowel sounds begin to slide and lengthen. Four variations of
beautiful mosaic art, and the sages reach the immortality of the /o/ vowel sounds appear in succession:
“God’s holy fire” by being a part of these mosaics. That is, they
are forever preserved via art, ageless and undying. Thus, the no country for old men
“artifice of eternity” suggests that art both has the power to
give humans a glimpse of eternity, and is itself a way to reach This combination of likeness and unlikeness (the sounds
that eternity for themselves. are similar, yet not quite the same) foreshadows the
speaker's relationship to the country he feels himself to be
The speaker wants to join them, in his own way, and his so separate from. He will be able to see the world of the
final vision of immortality is one that sums up the power of young from a position unlike that of its happy, lively
art—its ability to preserve the past, exist in the present, inhabitants, but he also has a deep familiarity with their
and endure into the future. Art, the speaker insists, also can situation: he was, of course, once young, but is not
still “sing,” speaking to future generations even after the anymore.
artist is long gone.
The sentence is strong and declarative: no commas or
As such, when he has learned from the sages and left behind other interruptions soften it. It also sits uneasily next to
his body, the speaker says, he will never “take / My bodily the rest of the line it belongs to. After the strong caesura
form from any natural thing,” and describes instead taking the of the period
form of some piece of golden art. In this he might resemble following "men," the reader encounters the beginning of a
 new sentence: "The young." evocation of age:
Enjambment then separates "The young" from whatever it is
that the speaker is going to say about them, so that those That is no country for old men. The young
young people sit in isolation next to the first sentence's

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Fish, flesh, or ...
... of unageing intellect.
The reader immediately gets the sense that, whatever the
Continuing the previous lines' sense of abundance with a
Get hundreds more LitCharts at sting in the tail, the speaker uses the emphatic punch of
alliteration and consonance to sum up all the creatures of
www.litcharts.com of this country, the speaker says, the country of the young in one fell swoop:

spend the warm and easy Fish, flesh, orfowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
reasons are that the country we're encountering is no good
for old men, the young have something to do with it.
These bold lines cover the whole world. All the living creatures
LINES 1-4 months of summer congratulating themselves: life loves life.
No wonder this is "no country for old men": old men are only
The young ... going to remind you that summer doesn't last forever, and
... the mackerel-crowded seas, that what is begotten and born will inevitably die.
In these lines, the speaker begins to build a picture of the Readers get an even stronger sense of this world's
rich, fertile, and thoughtless country of the young. hostility towards the old in the last lines of the stanza:
He describes the residents of this country in ways that move
from the general to the highly specific. "The young / In one Caught in that sensual music all neglect
another's arms" and the "birds in the trees" are presented en Monuments of unageing intellect.
masse, yet readers know exactly what kind of fish this
country is rich with: "The salmon-falls, the What the country of the young lacks, the speaker suggests, is
mackerel-crowded seas." The detail of these later lines helps the capacity to appreciate that which doesn't speak
to create a sense of a whole rich and fertile world—and immediately to the body and the senses—those "Monuments
perhaps a specifically Irish world. Both salmon and mackerel of unageing," or timeless, "intellect."
are characteristically Irish, and the rivers and seas also
Here, a complex pattern of sound helps to support these
suggest the landscape of the poet Yeats's native country.
ideas. Assonance of the /aw/ sound draws a link between
But the generality of the earlier lines and the idea of the seas "begotten" and "caught"—if you've been begotten, you're
as "crowded" helps to make this country seem mythic, too. going to be caught in the illusions of the body, at least for a
There's a sense here of a country that's almost like the while. The sibilance of "sensual music" is itself sensually
Garden of Eden, where all any living creature does is sing, musical, seductively pretty. But there's a harsher reality to
make babies, or lie follow: the sharp /t/ and /k/ sounds of "neglect" and
around kissing. Everything here is abundant and peaceful. "intellect" stand in opposition to that sensual music.
But the speaker breaks in on this rich picture with The speaker's reference to "monuments of unageing
an uncompromising aside: intellect" bears a closer examination. "Monuments" will
reappear in line 14 of the second stanza, again as things
... The young there to be studied or learned from. But what are these
In one another's arms, birds in the trees, monuments? In the first
—Those dying generations—at their song stanza, one could read the monuments as the neglected and
unwanted "old men" themselves (a reading that gives the
This sobering intrusion, set off by emphatic dashes, lets speaker, clearly an old man himself, an edge of bitterness).
readers know that this place is only like Paradise on the But if the monument is of "unageing intellect," it's not the old
surface. Even in the middle of all this thoughtless youth, man, for he has certainly aged. It's something immortal—and,
death waits. The speaker, whom the first line has already as will become clearer later in the poem, is perhaps is a
presented as at a bit of a remove from this country, here reference to art.
shows that he has a perspective that all the happy living
creatures here aren't willing to consider: an old man can see
LINES 9-12
death in the land of the young. An aged man ...
... its mortal dress,
LINES 5-8
The speaker goes on to muse on the nature of old age, and
how it might be transcended or overcome. In lines 9-10, the The sharp repeated sounds, pointy as a flesh-less elbow,
speaker describes the fate of the old man who doesn't take helps to create the image of an old man as bony and
his soul in hand. Notice how consonance on the /t/ and /k/ weathered as a scarecrow.
sounds helps to evoke frail, brittle old age: But as in line 1, a striking enjambment produces a feeling
of contrast at the end of these lines:
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick

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helps to emphasize the distinction between the two ideas
they propose:
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
Get hundreds more LitCharts at
www.litcharts.com Rather than being directly taught to sing, the soul must
look inward and study something of its own. And what
is that something? A monument.
Consider the connotations of the word "monument." A The reader will remember that the word "monuments"
monument isn't just any old edifice: it's specifically a appeared once before, in line 8, specifically as things that
structure that's built to commemorate or memorialize some the body-oriented young "neglect" ("monuments of
past event. To learn to sing, then, the soul must take a little unageing intellect"). A "monument" at first seems like a
internal field curiously solid thing to link to the intellect or the soul—but
Here, the break in the thought leaves "unless" on its own then, readers are clearly in the world of the imagination
next to the image of the scrawny old man. Like a light now, and if the immaterial soul can have hands to clap and
bulb going on over his head, the word heralds a transition a throat to sing with, it can also have monuments.
into a whole new kind of thinking. trip, to discover something that marks a prior time, but
This stanza begins to introduce readers to the speaker's that itself is still present now.
big idea: that looking into one's soul, and educating that That said, it's also possible to read these lines quite
soul, can help one to transcend the inevitable bodily decay differently. The speaker might be referring again to that
of old age. If the soul can "clap its hands and sing," it can land of the young here. In that land, there is no "singing
somehow transform the "aged man" into something more school," and instead the young focus only on testaments to
than just a "tattered coat." Notice that the imagery here their own youth and beauty—"Monuments of its own
suggests that the body is nothing more than a garment for significance." In this reading, such narrow-minded egotism,
the soul: the "mortal dress" is the flesh itself. such preoccupation with the present and pleasures of the
The form of lines 10-12 also seems to folds over on itself: flesh, impedes the development of the soul. As such, the
speaker will find no transcendence, no way to overcome
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless the travails of age, in that land.
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
LINES 15-16
For every tatterin its mortal dress
And therefore I ...
Notice how the repetition of "tatter" frames the ... city of Byzantium.
repetition (diacope) of "sing." Here, the speaker suggests, How is the soul to study "monuments of its own
to sing is a response to being tattered, and singing in turn magnificence"? The speaker doesn't seem daunted by this
transforms one's tatters. prospect: he knows just what he's going to do, and
introduces his plan with the logical word "therefore":
LINES 13-14
Nor is there ... And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
... its own magnificence; To the holy city of Byzantium.
So how should the soul go about seeking this
musical transcendence? What does it mean for a Right away, the reader gets the sense that this sailing of
soul to sing? the seas may not be a literal voyage. Why not? First of all,
Byzantium stopped being Byzantium in 330 AD, when the
That, the speaker goes on, is the problem. No one in the
ancient Emperor Constantine made it the capital of the
country of the young is going to teach his soul to sing. Roman Empire (deeming it Constantinople). Second of all,
Notice how the alliteration and sibilance of these two lines
 note the compression of these lines. The speaker seems to speaker is going to teach something as immaterial and
move from the physical world he's been standing in (or at infinitely important as his soul to sing, he's going to need
least next to) to Byzantium in a voyage of only one line—in to go somewhere holy to do it.
other words, at the speed of the imagination. The simple word "come" is also significant here. It's the
As a city at once real and imaginary, dead in some ways only word in the poem that ever rhymes with "Byzantium,"
and living in others (today we call the city that stands on and if the reader thinks for a moment, they'll notice that it
the same ground Istanbul), Byzantium seems like just the has multiple meanings. "Come" can be a thing one is about
place to discover those "monuments" that are equally to do: "Come here!" But it can also be (as it is in this line) a
real and imaginary, current and linked to the past. thing that one has already done: "I have come." The past
It's also important that Byzantium is a "holy city." Notice and the future seem to
the assonance between the words "holy" and "soul": if the

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level. This is one way of thinking about those "monuments":
the art memorializing the sages has outlasted the sages
meet in this word; already, the speaker is developing a themselves yet seems to also be the sages, all at the same
new relationship with time. time.
Addressing these ancient holy men, the speaker asks them to:
LINES 17-20
O sages standing ... Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre
... of my soul. And be the singing-masters of my soul
Get hundreds more LitCharts at
www.litcharts.com The speaker here uses one of Yeats's very favorite words:
"gyre." A gyre is a spiraling whirl-windy motion, or a
When the speaker asks these spinning sages to be "the whirlwind itself. "Perne" is an invented word meaning "to
singing masters of my soul," he might seem to contradict his spin like a pern"—a bobbin on a spinning wheel. The sages
own earlier statement that there is no singing-school. But the are thus asked not only to emerge from where they stand in
rules of Byzantium seem to work differently: once a traveler this place beyond time, but to spin round and round. This is
has reached this imagined world, when he studies the an image that might be familiar to readers of Dante's
monuments, they become his singing teachers. Paradiso, a poem that influenced Yeats (and many other
The speaker's adventure in his inner Byzantium begins with a poets); in that poem, souls in heaven dance by spinning and
bang. Suddenly, he is standing before ancient sages, whirling, their circling imitating the perfect circles in which
addressing them in a direct apostrophe: the planets spin. But the word "perne" is homely as well as
transcendent: there's something both transcendent and
O sages standing in God's holy fire down-to-earth about the image of a sage spinning like a
As in the gold mosaic of a wall bobbin.
LINES 21-24
This rich and complex image creates two overlapping
realities, which dance in and out of each other. Consume my heart ...
... artifice of eternity.
If the reader is familiar with Byzantine art (see the
"Resources" section for some images if not), they'll know When the sages teach one to sing, they don't fool around.
that the churches of Byzantium were full of gorgeous This kind of singing seems to be more than just learning to
mosaics. Brightly colored and often gilded, these mosaics carry a tune; rather, it involves giving up your whole soul to
would have been particularly awe-inspiring in a time before the work:
artificial light, glittering high above worshipers. And unlike
other forms of visual art, mosaics don't fade: what you see Consume my heart away; sick with desire
now is very much what a viewer would have seen thousands And fastened to a dying animal
of years ago. It knows not what it is; ...
When the speaker imagines that the holy fire the sages stand
in is like the gold mosaic of a wall, a picture of these famous To "consume" is an especially vivid word here: it means to
and glorious artworks rises to the reader's mind. The speaker eat, but is often used metaphorically to describe fires. The
is at once addressing these deathless works of art and speaker is asking the sages (who, after all, are standing in
something beyond them, something that they're only able to "holy fire") to burn up his heart like a religious offering.
hint at. In the imaginary Byzantium, art and the world The speaker says that his heart is "fastened to a dying
beyond seem linked to each other at a deep and mystical animal," i.e., to the speaker's mortal body. But, of course, his
 physical heart is also a part of that dying animal—the part of
it that keeps it from dying, in fact. The heart is a common "Me," that thing that it might be tempting to think of as just
metaphor for the soul, perhaps for this reason: when it isn't a sad soul left in a "tattered coat," in fact rhymes with
beating anymore, a person has died, their soul has departed "eternity" itself. But what kind of eternity is this?
their body. But the heart is also often used to describe one's The reader has already seen that the immortality of the
feelings. sages seems to be both in art and beyond art. Apparently,
So the speaker's "heart," here, has elements of his physical, immortality itself has a quality of "artifice" in it. This is a
emotional, and spiritual life all wrapped up in it. Within his word that might make a modern reader a little uneasy:
body, his soul feels stuck, and can't perceive its own deeper contemporary language associates "artifice" with deceit or
and more enduring reality. And it's that reality that the "artificiality." But "artifice," here, means "artistry." Eternity
speaker is reaching out to the sages for. Notice the work this seems to have a lot in common with both singing and
stanza's concluding rhyming couplet does here: mosaics: it's a kind of eternity that is crafted and perfected,
not organic and growing willy-nilly like the country of the
... gather me young.
Into the artifice of eternity.

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Especially notable here is the sound balance of the line

Consider how the speaker's invocation of both music and "hammered gold and gold enamelling": the similar sounds of
Get hundreds more LitCharts at "hammered" and "enamelling" hold hands across an expanse
of gold.

www.litcharts.com Or set upon a golden bough to sing All that gold reminds the reader of the gold mosaic that is
like "God's holy fire" in line 17. Here, the speaker imagines
mosaic might make the very poem he's writing an instance of not just traveling to a world of eternal, untarnished gold (see
this "artifice of eternity." Poetry is musical, like a song; it's the "Symbols" section for more on why gold might be an
made of many little pieces (words, that is) put together to especially good image for eternity), but being made of that
form a big picture, like a mosaic. The very act of writing a gold. Being a part of eternity means being made of the
poem might be one way to reach out toward a bigger reality materials of eternity.
than the one your body is stuck in. (Indeed, the reader might This spiritual gold is presented as distinct from "any natural
want to consider that we're reading this poem long after its thing"—but the next lines will complicate this separation of
author's death!) the eternal from the natural.
LINES 25-29 LINES 30-32
Once out of ... Or set upon ...
... drowsy Emperor awake; ... or to come.
The speaker can't quite reach the immortality of the While the speaker began his final stanza by asserting that
sages—at least, not yet, trapped as he is in his mortal body. In "Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from
the poem's final stanza, he falls back from his direct any natural thing," he seems at first to contradict himself in
invocation to the burning, spinning wise men and considers the poem's last few lines.
what he will do when he can at last join them fully. He says
he'll never inhabit a mortal body again, and instead will A golden form set upon a golden bough to sing sounds an
become a work of art created from gold. awful lot like a golden version of the mortal birds ("those
Notice how the woven patterns of alliteration (marked in dying generations") from the poem's first and second lines.
bold), assonance (marked in italics), and word repetition And in a poem where the act of schooling one's soul in
here make this future life as an artwork sound harmoniously transcendence is presented as singing, the reader might be
delicious—and take a look at the diacope of the word "gold": thinking of birds here for more reasons than one.
How might the form of a golden bird be different from "any
Once out of nature I shall never take natural thing"? What is the difference between an eternal
My bodily form from any natural thing bird and a mortal bird? It's the same as the difference
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make between the "sages" and the mosaic / holy fire where they
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling stand. The sages' bodies are long gone, but they're still there
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake in art and in eternity. Similarly, the golden bird the speaker
imagines becoming is like a body without being a body.
 It also has a specific job. Having finished his time in to the future. Eternity, in this poem, mystically mirrors
earthly experience and utterly transcends it at the same
"singing school," the speaker imagines that his eternal
form will time.

... sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
SYMBOLS
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
GOLD
The shape of the sentence "past, or passing, or to come" also Gold is an ancient symbol not just for value and
draws the reader back to the first stanza, where "begotten, status, but for spiritual treasure. Because of its
born, and dies" mirrors it. When he is a soul that has become brilliance and the fact that it doesn't tarnish, it's often used
a piece of eternity and an immortal singer, the speaker to represent things of true deep worth—especially the
imagines, he will teach the "lords and ladies of Byzantium" of riches of the soul.
the mystery of time—in the same way that the "sages" taught
him to transcend time. "What is past, or passing, or to come": It serves all these roles here, and more. Gold, in "Sailing to
what else does eternity contain but that? Byzantium," is always associated with transcendent, eternal
art. "God's holy fire" itself is likened to gold mosaic. In the
Notice, too, that "Byzantium" again rhymes with "come"
final stanza, when the speaker is imagining what it will be like
here: that word that can sit comfortably in the past, present, when his soul has truly moved beyond the confines of his
and future. When this rhyme appears in line 15, it refers to body, he'll
the present ("I have sailed the seas and come"); here it refers

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Two kinds of artistry play powerful symbolic roles
in "Sailing to Byzantium": music-making and visual
take on a form that is altogether golden—that is, art.
immortal, beautiful, and perfected. Gold, in this poem, These different art forms have a complicated relationship
isn't just raw wealth, but an immortal beauty that has to each other here. Music and song are used as a
been painstakingly shaped. metaphorfor what the soul needs to do to attain
immortality (as when the speaker asks the "sages" to be
Where this symbol appears in the poem: "the singing-masters of my
• Line 18: “gold mosaic” soul"). Music is in some ways both an ephemeral and an
• Line 27: “Grecian goldsmiths” eternal art: while songs can be passed down, they also
disappear as soon as they're sung. Visual art-making, on the
• Line 28: “gold and gold”
other hand, is a kind of preservation that outwits time in a
• Line 30: “golden bough”
different way. The speaker sees the "sages standing in God's
holy fire / As in the gold mosaic of a wall": here, the mosaic
ART and eternal transcendence look just each other.

Get hundreds more LitCharts at The point here is that art doesn't just outlive humans,
but somehow resembles eternity itself. This is "the
www.litcharts.com artifice of eternity": art represents what is immortal
through what is mortal, and in doing so helps humans to
they're unaware of their own mortality. Their song here imagine something past their bodily lives.
thus represents fleeting, ephemeral beauty.
By the end of the poem, however, the speaker himself Where this symbol appears in the poem:
imagines taking on the form of a golden bird once he's out of
his mortal body. In this role, he'll be able to communicate the • Line 11: “sing, and louder sing”
wisdom of eternity to the living—to "sing," metaphorically, • Lines 13-14: “Nor is there singing school but studying
for all those "lords and ladies of Byzantium" who pass him by. / Monuments of its own magnificence;”
• Lines 17-18: “O sages standing in God's holy fire / As
Birdsong thus becomes something different here—instead of
in the gold mosaic of a wall,”
something beautiful yet fleeting, it becomes everlasting. A
• Line 20: “And be the singing-masters of my
golden bird, of course, can't literally sing. Instead, as an
soul.” • Line 24: “the artifice of eternity.”
undying work of art, this bird would bear witness to
• Lines 27-28: “But such a form as Grecian
history—it could watch the world go by, and remind those goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold and gold
who look upon it of the past, perhaps pushing them to reflect enamelling”
on all that this bird must have
 existed). It was renamed Constantinople after the Emperor
Constantine, who made it the capitol of the Roman Empire,
BIRDS AND BIRDSONG and it later became modern-day Istanbul; its time as
Birds appear at two points in the poem: in Byzantium was already in the distant past when Yeats wrote
the this poem.
thoughtless world of the young, and in the Byzantium is associated with ancient religion (including
transcendent world of Byzantium. They thus play a being an important seat of early Christianity), and it's
complicated role, serving at once as symbols of mortality and famous for its beautiful icons and mosaic art.
immortality. In "Sailing to Byzantium," both the fact that the city is
In the first stanza, the birds are called "those dying long-lost and that its gorgeous art remains to this day make
generations." These birds sing beautifully, yet (as it a powerful symbol for spiritual immortality after death.
animals) While the civilizations that first built it have past, their art
figuratively seen through the years. remains, and still connects with the speaker as an image of
that which survives past the mortal body.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:
Where this symbol appears in the poem:
• Line 2: “birds”
• Line 5: “fowl” • Lines 15-16: “And therefore I have sailed the seas
• Line 30: “set upon a golden bough to sing” and come / To the holy city of Byzantium.”
• Lines 17-18: “O sages standing in God's holy fire / As
in the gold mosaic of a wall,”
BYZANTIUM • Lines 30-32: “Or set upon a golden bough to sing / To
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city that has an lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or
aura of legend around it (in spite of the fact it really passing, or to come.”

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level, this alliteration (and repetition) makes the poem feel
musical and lyrical—that is, like a work of art. This, in turn,
reflects the poem's thematic idea that immortality can be
POETIC DEVICES achieved through art; the speaker is creating a work of art
with this very poem, and in doing so a part of him lives on.
ALLITERATION Other times the alliteration serves to draw readers'
Get hundreds more LitCharts at attention to certain words and phrases. In line 5, for
www.litcharts.com instance, the alliteration of the /f/ sound in "Fish, flesh,
orfowl" connects these three words, placing them on the
APOSTROPHE same level and underscoring that they are all subject to the
same fate. As the speaker says in the next line, again
Apostrophe makes a powerful appearance at one of the poem's
heightening the phrase with alliteration, "Whatever is
most important turning points. The speaker, having made his
begotten, born, and dies." That is, all living things—be they
Alliteration is especially prominent in this poem because of fish, human beings, or birds—must die.
the speaker's fondness for not only repeated sounds, but for
repetition, period. For instance, in the second stanza, "sing" Where Alliteration appears in the poem:
meets "sing" and "singing," and also matches up with "soul,"
"school," "studying," "sailed," and "seas." (See the Poetic • Line 3: “song”
• Line 4: “salmon-falls,” “seas”
Devices entry on "sibilance" for more on /s/ sounds
• Line 5: “Fish, flesh, or fowl,” “summer”
specifically.)
• Line 6: “begotten, born”
Similarly, /g/ sounds appear repeatedly, but across only a few • Line 7: “sensual”
words: "God" and "Grecian" both appear once, and there are • Line 11: “Soul,” “sing,” “sing”
five instances of "gold" or a word that starts with "gold" • Line 13: “singing school,” “studying”
("goldsmiths" in line 27 and "golden" in line 30). On a broad
• Line 14: “Monuments,” “magnificence”
 • Line 15: “sailed the seas” eternity." Apostrophe here has something in common with
• Line 16: “city” the "invocation to the Muses" that appeared at the
• Line 17: “sages standing,” “God's” beginnings of Greek poems (and in the poems of many of
• Line 18: “gold” their followers). When the speaker addresses the sages, he's
• Line 20: “singing-masters,” “my ,” “soul.” hoping not only to be taken up into their world, but to infuse
• Line 21: “desire” his present work with some of that "artifice of eternity": after
• Line 22: “dying” all, we're reading a work of "artifice."
• Line 25: “nature,” “never”
• Line 26: “form from,” “natural” Where Apostrophe appears in the poem:
• Line 27: “form,” “Grecian goldsmiths” • Lines 17-24: “O sages standing in God's holy fire / As in
• Line 28: “gold,” “gold,” “enamelling” the gold mosaic of a wall, / Come from the holy fire,
• Line 29: “Emperor” perne in a gyre, / And be the singing-masters of my
• Line 30: “golden,” “bough” soul. / Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And
• Line 31: “lords,” “ladies,” “Byzantium” fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is; and
• Line 32: “past,” “passing” gather me / Into the artifice of eternity.”
imagined voyage to Byzantium, directly addresses the
"sages" in the third stanza: ASSONANCE
"Sailing to Byzantium" makes copious use of assonance. A
O sages standing in God's holy fire
common device in poetry, assonance here helps to create the
As in the gold mosaic of a wall, rich and hypnotic imagery of the poem. Through a pattern of
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, linked vowel sounds through and across stanzas, the speaker
And be the singing-masters of my soul. weaves the poem together into a coherent fabric, into a work
of art like the golden mosaics the poem describes.
This direct address appears at the exact midpoint of the
The assonant consistency within stanzas also helps to
poem, and marks the speaker's real imaginative leap
emphasize each stanza's mood. For instance, note the
between being a tired old man and a spiritual seeker. In assonant /uh/ sounds of lines 1 and 2:
addressing the sages directly, the speaker is reaching out
beyond the confines of his body already, for the sages are "in That is no country for old men. The young
God's holy fire," and/or in a mosaic; he's attempting a kind of In one another's arms ...
communication of the spirit, not the body.
This apostrophe to the sages also suggests that the speaker This sound unites the "country" with the "young" who are
hopes to one day be among their number, in "the artifice of

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musicality, while also emphasizing some of its thematic
ideas.
wrapped up in "one another's arms": there's a solid wall of
Get hundreds more LitCharts at Where Assonance appears in the poem:
• Line 1: “no,” “country,” “old,” “young”
www.litcharts.com The salmon-falls, the • Line 2: “one another's”
• Line 4: “falls”
mackerel-crowded seas, • Line 5: “all,” “long”
• Line 6: “begotten”
assonance keeping the speaker out of this world. Indeed,
• Line 7: “Caught,” “all”
the speaker's identifier—he is an "old" man—chimes with
• Line 9: “An,” “man,” “is,” “thing”
"no," emphasizing his inability to be a part of this youthful
• Line 10: “stick”
world.
• Line 11: “its,” “sing,” “sing”
Later in the stanza, the repeated /aw/ sound underscores the • Line 12: “in its”
way that all these elements of this youthful land are, • Line 13: “is,” “singing,” “studying”
nevertheless, subject to the passage of time; "all" that is
• Line 14: “its,” “magnificence”
"begotten" will die, no matter how "caught" up it is in the
• Line 17: “O,” “holy,” “fire”
pleasures of life. In the next stanza, many short /i/ sounds
• Line 18: “gold mosaic”
evoke the "singing" of the soul. Each short /i/ is like a
repeated musical note peppered throughout the stanza. • Line 19: “fire,” “gyre”
• Line 21: “desire”
Overall, then, assonance adds to the poem's lyricism and
 • Line 22: “dying”
• Line 25: “nature,” “take” A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
• Line 27: “goldsmiths,” “make”
• Line 28: “hammered,” “gold,” “gold,” Here, that "unless" heralds a big change: where the speaker
“enamelling” • Line 29: “drowsy,” “awake” has been bemoaning how the world of the young and vital
• Line 30: “bough” has no room for him, here he's finding a new way of
• Line 32: “past,” “passing” understanding his life and his old age.
In the third stanza, frequent caesura helps to shape the
CAESURA speaker's address to the sages. In lines 19, 21, and 23, the
"Sailing to Byzantium" is filled with caesurae—especially in speaker uses caesura either to describe an action ("perne in
its first stanza. The effects these frequent pauses create in a gyre"), or to add greater detail to his exploration of the
this poem are sometimes contradictory: caesura can help to state of his heart:
create a delicious, lazy, lilting quality, or to break up a spell of
that kind of sweet languor. It can also create a feeling of Consume my heart away; sick with desire
urgency, of one thought hurrying into the next. And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
In the first stanza, the speaker uses a lot of caesurae in his
evocation of the world of the young. In lines 4-6, his use of
mid line commas creates a sense of abundance as he lists In this example, the description of the heart is fastened into
creature upon creature: the lines as the heart itself is described as being "fastened to a
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long dying animal." The shape of the caesura mimics the shape of
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. the idea.

But at the very beginning of the poem, in lines 1-3, Where Caesura appears in the poem:
caesura abruptly breaks into this festive reckoning of • Line 1: “for old men. The young”
happy living creatures: • Line 2: “arms, birds”
• Line 3: “Those dying generations—at their
... The young song” • Line 4: “salmon-falls, the
In one another's arms, birds in the trees, mackerel-crowded ” • Line 5: “Fish, flesh, or fowl,
—Those dying generations—at their song, commend”
• Line 6: “begotten, born, and dies.”
That pungent "Those dying generations," with its use of • Line 10: “upon a stick, unless”
emphatic dashes rather than subtler commas, makes it • Line 11: “sing, and louder sing”
clear that the raptures of the young are (unbeknownst to • Line 19: “holy fire, perne in a gyre,”
them) illusory. • Line 21: “heart away; sick with desire”
Later in the poem, caesurae help to throw emphasis on • Line 23: “what it is; and gather me”
turning points. For instance, consider the break in line 10:

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idea. Where diacope appears, it draws readers attention to
the importance of a single important word; in this poem,
those words are "sing" and "gold."
• Line 32: “past, or passing, or to come.” DIACOPE Consider lines 7-8:

... unless
Get hundreds more LitCharts at Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
www.litcharts.com
Here, the repetition of "sing" is even further driven home
rhythmic sea. with the word "louder": diacope makes the speaker's sense
But enjambment also serves to complicate the lines' meaning. of urgency and necessity around this kind of soul-singing
For instance, consider the enjambment of the first two lines: clear. The word then appears again in line 13 as "singing,"
making this technically an example of polyptoton. The
Diacope is a flavorful and punchy poetic effect, and the overall effect of this repetition is the same, however; it
speaker of "Sailing to Byzantium" uses it repeatedly for this underscores the importance of the soul learning to "sing," to
reason. Diacope is often used to strengthen or emphasize an break free of the body.
A similar effect comes up in lines 27-28: As in the gold mosaic of a wall

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make By keeping the image of the "holy fire" a little apart from the
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling "gold mosaic," the poem gives the reader a chance to take in
these images first one and then the other: but here, the
These repeated "golds" create a sense impression of juxtaposition of the two visions of the sages helps to unite
overwhelming richness: that's an awful lot of gold, you them. Generally speaking, then, enjambment in this poem
helps to build complex imagery and to produce surprising
know? (The world "golden" also returns later in the stanza,
layers of meaning.
creating another instance of polyptoton.) The repeated
punch of the monosyllabic, hard sound of the word
"gold"—with its ringing /g/ and thumping /d/—also does Where Enjambment appears in the poem:
some sensory work alongside the adjective "hammered," • Lines 1-2: “young / In”
helping readers to hear the creation of the hammered, • Lines 5-6: “long / Whatever”
golden ornament the speaker describes. • Lines 7-8: “neglect / Monuments”
• Lines 10-11: “unless / Soul”
Where Diacope appears in the poem: • Lines 11-12: “sing / For”
• Lines 13-14: “studying / Monuments”
• Line 11: “sing, and louder sing”
• Lines 15-16: “come / To”
• Lines 27-28: “as Grecian goldsmiths make /
• Lines 17-18: “fire / As”
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling”
• Lines 21-22: “desire / And”
• Lines 22-23: “animal / It”
ENJAMBMENT • Lines 23-24: “me / Into”
Each stanza of "Sailing to Byzantium" contains only a few • Lines 25-26: “take / My”
sentences across its eight lines—and in fact, the second • Lines 27-28: “make / Of”
stanza is just one long sentence. The poem thus winds up • Lines 28-29: “enamelling / To”
using a whole lot of enjambment. • Lines 30-31: “sing / To”
Enjambment can sometimes create a choppy effect, but this • Lines 31-32: “Byzantium / Of”
poem's strong and persistent meter combines with the line
breaks to produce a feeling of continuity. The enjambed PARADOX
lines help to maintain an ongoing flow of thought, which
The paradox of this poem lies in the way the speaker thinks
might echo the speaker's imaginary voyage: a continuous
path across a about his fading body and the immortal soul. While the
That is no country for old men. The young speaker longs to escape his failing old flesh and become
In one another's arms ... immortal (like a work of art), all of his language for his soul is
bodily. The soul has "hands" in line 11 and is represented as a
Here, enjambment leaves "the young" stranded on the same "heart" in line 21. And when the speaker imagines his
line as "old men"—strengthening the juxtaposition and eventual immortality, in which he will "never take / my bodily
contrast between these two kinds of people. form from any natural thing," the bodily form he imagines
taking is nevertheless a copy of a natural thing: while his
The enjambment of lines 17-18 helps to drive a vivid
imagined future body will be made
image home:

O sages standing in God's holy fire

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 10

the reader to a mystical transcendence at the root of this
poem. The speaker's desire to leave his body behind isn't a
of gold, it will still be in the form of a bird, an animal. desire to become immaterial, but a desire to have a different
Get hundreds more LitCharts at kind of body, one that is at once like a living thing and totally
beyond a living thing.
www.litcharts.com underscores how much this world The paradox in this poem helps to create a richer and
more mysterious vision of what it might mean to become
contains, making it all the an immortal, or a work of art, or something that is both of
those things at once.
This paradox—the speaker wants to escape the body, yet can
only conceive of that escape in bodily terms—helps to point Where Paradox appears in the poem:
 • Lines 9-12: “An aged man is but a paltry thing, / A • Lines 1-6: “The young / In one another's arms, birds
tattered coat upon a stick, unless / Soul clap its in the trees, / —Those dying generations—at their
hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in song, / The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded
its mortal dress,” seas, / Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
• Lines 17-23: “O sages standing in God's holy fire / As in / Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.”
the gold mosaic of a wall, / Come from the holy fire, • Lines 9-10: “An aged man is but a paltry thing, /
perne in a gyre, / And be the singing-masters of my A tattered coat upon a stick,”
soul. / Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And
fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is;” SIBILANCE
• Lines 25-30: “Once out of nature I shall never take /
The sibilance in "Sailing to Byzantium" helps to create a
My bodily form from any natural thing, / But such a
form as Grecian goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold hushed feeling throughout. The subject matter of this poem
and gold enamelling / To keep a drowsy Emperor is on a rather bold and brassy scale: immortality, gold, singing,
awake; / Or set upon a golden bough to sing” holy fires. Sibilance helps to temper the poem's volume.
Inherently quiet—you can't yell an /s/ sound—sibilance
evokes whispers and softness. (Observe that even the words
PARATAXIS "whispers" and "softness" are sibilant!) Because of its
The speaker's use of parataxis helps to create a sense of quieting effects, sibilance may also create a sense of secrecy
grandeur, especially in the poem's first stanza. After a blunt or privacy.
assertion that "That is no country for old men," the first six The frequent sibilance in this poem help to give it a hushed
lines make a dramatic inventory of the denizens of the quality that mirrors the quiet and introspective nature of
country of the young: the speaker's journey. While the matters he's dealing with
are grand and dramatic, the drama isn't necessarily
... The young perceptible from outside the speaker's mind.
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
That sibilance here also often comes alongside big and
—Those dying generations—at their song,
impressive gestures. For instance, take line 11: "Soul clap its
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, hands and sing, and louder sing." The speaker is telling his
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long soul to sing loudly, yet the line itself sibilant. This fits right in
Whatever is begotten, born, or dies. with some of the poem's broader paradoxical qualities. The
process the speaker is going through is at once cosmic and
This list creates a sense of the overwhelming fertile intensely personal, public and private, communicable and
abundance of this world. You could rearrange many of these past speech. The quiet of sibilance alongside the poem's
clauses without changing the meaning of the stanza at large. brilliant and gilded imagery keeps the poem in a state of rich
This grand, sweeping inventory makes the world of the tension between its extremes.
young seem all-encompassing. The speaker's sense that this
is "no country" for him is made all the more poignant by the Where Sibilance appears in the poem:
parataxis here as well: he definitely falls into the categories
of the fish, flesh, or fowl, and is of course also one of those • Line 3: “song”
who are begotten, born, and die. Yet he is still not a part of • Line 4: “salmon,” “seas”
this world; parataxis • Line 5: “summer”
more striking that it does not contain the speaker. The • Line 7: “sensual”
poem's use of parataxis creates a feeling that, truly, the • Line 10: “stick,” “unless”
only way for the speaker to get away will be through the • Line 11: “Soul,” “sing,” “sing”
power of his imagination, art, or death. (Or maybe all • Line 12: “dress”
three.) • Line 13: “singing,” “school,” “studying”
• Line 14: “magnificence”
Where Parataxis appears in the poem: • Line 15: “sailed,” “seas”

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• Line 24: “artifice”
• Line 25: “Once,” “shall”
• Line 27: “such,” “goldsmiths”
• Line 17: “sages,” “standing” • Line 30: “set,” “sing”
• Line 20: “singing,” “soul” • Line 32: “past,” “passing”
• Line 21: “Consume,” “sick”
• Line 22: “fastened”
 Enamelling (Line 28) - A form of brilliantly colored
glassy decoration often applied to metal.
VOCABULARY
Salmon-falls (Line 4) - Little waterfalls in a river, where FORM, METER, & RHYME
one might see salmon leaping.
Get hundreds more LitCharts at FORM
www.litcharts.com "Sailing to Byzantium" is made up of four stanzas, each with
eight lines (making them octaves). The poem also follows the
with a powerful and regular shape. ancient pattern of ottava rima (see "Meter" and "Rhyme
Scheme" for more details on how this works), but it doesn't
For one thing, these stanzas are further separated by
Roman numerals, marking each as I, II, III, and IV. This use a particular poetic form beyond that. However, it's still a
creates the sensation of a poem created of vignettes, of poem
short, self contained scenes within a broader shared world. the solid walls of the stanzas. While the speaker longs
Indeed, the first stanza describes the world of the young; to transcend his physical body, he has to start from
the second focuses on why the speaker must go to within it.
Byzantium; the third focuses on what the speaker then
METER
finds there, what he asks of the "sages"; and the fourth and
final stanza envisions what the speaker will become after "Sailing to Byzantium" primarily uses iambic pentameter —
his death. that is, a line of five iambs, or poetic feet with an
unstressed-stressed beat pattern. Take line 9:
What's more, Yeats, who was deeply interested in the occult
and the magical, like would have known that the number four
was traditionally associated with the body and the physical An aged man is but a paltry thing
world. The four regular stanzas of this poem thus reflect its
subject. Here, the "singing" soul—the poetry itself—is bound But, as is often the case with poems that use iambic
by pentameter as their base, this rhythm isn't totally consistent
throughout. Even the very first line does something irregular:
Mackerel (Line 4) - A common kind of oily, ocean-dwelling
fish. Fowl (Line 5) - Bird life. That is no country for old men. The young
Begotten (Line 6) - Made through
This line has six stresses instead of the typical five. The
reproduction—parents beget children, plants beget
front loaded beginning, with heavy stresses on "That," "no
little plants, etc.
country," and "old men," helps to create the sense that the
Sensual (Line 7) - Appealing to or gratifying the speaker is at odds with the lyrical and delightful world of
senses. Paltry (Line 9) - Meager or pathetic. the young that he
goes on to describe in a much more regular iambic rhythm.
Tattered (Line 10) - Ragged or shredded. Indeed, the next line is much more regular, except for a
Byzantium (Line 16, Line 31) - An ancient Greek holy trochee (stressed-unstressed) right after the caesura:
city, which stood where Istanbul is today. A seat of early
Christianity. In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
Sages (Line 17) - Wise men, particularly holy or ancient
wise men. Throughout the poem, the reader will find that the speaker
also breaks his iambic rhythm in moments of special
Mosaic (Line 18) - Art made out of many small tiles of
emphasis, change, or stress, as he does in line 19:
pottery or glass.
Perne (Line 19) - To spin like a "pern," a spool on a Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre
spinning wheel; Yeats coined this word himself.
Gyre (Line 19) - A whirl or a spiraling form. (Yeats loved He falls back into relatively regular iambs in moments of
this word!) establishing detail, and in moments of peace or mystery. Take
Artifice (Line 24) - Clever artistry, with a connotation of lines 25-26, where he describes what form he wants his soul
trickery; think about "artificial" to get a sense of the to take after his death:
doubleness of this word.

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 12

 old age: old men can't participate in the world of the young,
and if they're not careful, they become shells of themselves.
Once out of nature I shall nevertake But the speaker is not resigned to such a decline, nor to
My bodily form from any natural thing irrelevance. Rather, he is passionately devoted to an ideal:
he will keep his soul alive, and teach it to sing even as his
The rhythm isn't perfect here, but in general there are physical body dies.
five pulsing beats in each line. This keeps up a steady The speaker's voyage to Byzantium is an internal, spiritual
heartbeat journey. Only by going deep into himself and offering his
Get hundreds more LitCharts at soul up to eternity can he transcend his failing outer self.
www.litcharts.com The man who can make such a journey—and who knows
that he has to make it—is something of a visionary.
which contains both of these places!
SETTING The place that is "no country for old men" has a hint of
paradise in it: it's a place of fertility, sensuality, and abundant
"Sailing to Byzantium" might be said to have three locations: life. This is the world as it looks to someone who feels old
in the world of the young, in Byzantium, and in the speaker's and irrelevant: even if "those dying generations" are mortal,
mind, they're also full of unthinking and vibrant life—for now.
under the passionate and disruptive energy of the Byzantium, on the contrary, is a place of intangible things.
speaker's desires. The meter here has both constancy and The speaker can reach it only through a voyage of the
wildness in it. imagination, as it has long vanished, transformed into a
different place (the city became Constantinople under the
RHYME SCHEME Romans in 330 CE, and
"Sailing to Byzantium" uses ottava rima, an ancient is now Istanbul). It's also a world of art and artistry. Where
rhyme scheme that runs like this: the country of the young is full of things that spontaneously
ABABABCC grow, Byzantium is the land of things that are made.

Ottava rima has a long history. It was first used, as far as While the growing world may have more of a solid reality
we know, by the medieval Italian poet Boccacio. Because than the imagined Byzantium, both are products of the
of its flexibility, it was often used for longer narrative speaker's mind: his perspective on the world around him
turns it into the land of the young, and Byzantium can be
poems. The speaker's use of it here thus lends the poem
visited only in his visions.
an epic quality.
The rhyme scheme of "Sailing to Byzantium" is, however, not
totally regular. The speaker often uses slant rhyme, as when CONTEXT
he rhymes "unless" and "dress" with "magnificence," or "wall,"
soul," and "animal." These slant rhymes are partly pragmatic LITERARY CONTEXT
(there just aren't as many rhyme-words in English as there William Butler Yeats was an influential Irish poet, most
are in Italian, the language where ottava rima originated), but active around the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Unlike
they're also meaningful. In these slightly mismatched many of his contemporaries, who were experimenting with
rhymes, readers often see the speaker confronting the free verse, Yeats loved old verse forms; his use of ottava rima
mismatch between the transcendent beauty of the soul and in "Sailing to Byzantium" is just one example of his command
the limitations of the physical world: consider that of traditional poetic styles. He was awarded a Nobel Prize
wall/soul/animal rhyme, for instance. for his works.
The C couplets that end each stanza, however, all rhyme Yeats was most deeply influenced by the poets of a
perfectly. Note that those end rhymes are the only places generation or two before him—for instance, the visionary
where the word "Byzantium" appears within the poem—and poetry of the Romantic poet William Blake and the works of
that in both instances, "Byzantium" is rhymed with "come." the Pre Raphaelite circle. His taste for magic and the occult
The speaker's longing for the transcendence he represents (both enjoying a renaissance during his lifetime) shows up in
with the ancient city is spelled out in rhyme. the mysticism of his verse. He can also be classed as a
Symbolist: an artist reacting against a predominating
Victorian naturalism in favor of work influenced by dreams,
SPEAKER imagination, and visions.
The speaker, readers can safely say, is an old man. His whole Yeats wrote "Sailing to Byzantium" in 1926, when he was in
perspective on the world and the action of the poem are his 60s, and said of it: "I am trying to write about the state of
founded on his reaction to his own age. In the first and my soul, for it is right for an old man to make his soul, and
second stanzas, he reveals his sadness at the indignities of some of my thoughts about that subject I have put into a
poem called 'Sailing to Byzantium.'"
 of Irish history. In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising,
HISTORICAL CONTEXT when Irish Republican forces rebelled against British
"Sailing to Byzantium" was written during a chaotic period occupation, a

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think
small group of Northern counties formed what was known McCarthy might have chosen this line?
as the Irish Free State. Yeats, who was a long-time Irish (https://www.litcharts.com/lit/no-country-for-old-men)
Republican, served as a senator for this state. In this
• Byzantine Mosaics — A Wikipedia article (with many
position, he wrote an important polemic against Catholic
lovely pictures) on Byzantine mosaic art.
anti-divorce sentiment. "Sailing to Byzantium" was written
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_mosaics)
during his time as a senator.
Yeats was also fascinated by the rise of Fascist governments LITCHARTS ON OTHER WILLIAM BUTLER
on the European continent, and had some Fascist YEATS POEMS
sympathies. While Yeats's belief in the value of the individual • An Irish Airman Foresees his Death
soul in "Sailing to Byzantium" might seem inflected by a • Easter, 1916
democratic spirit, politically he was not a fan of rule by • Leda and the Swan
citizens. • The Lake Isle of Innisfree
• The Second Coming
• The Wild Swans at Coole
MORE RESOURCES • When You Are Old
EXTERNAL RESOURCES
• A Reading of the Poem — The Irish actor Dermot HOW TO CITE
Crowley reads "Sailing to Byzantium" and discusses
what it means to him. (https://youtu.be/345ttNxIvog)
MLA
• Yeats's Biography — A short biography of Yeats with Nelson, Kristin. "Sailing to Byzantium." LitCharts. LitCharts
links to more of his poems LLC, 7 Jan 2020. Web. 22 Apr 2020.
(https://poets.org/poet/w-b-yeats)
CHICAGO MANUAL
• Yeats in Ireland — Some background on Yeats's
strong connections to his native Ireland. Nelson, Kristin. "Sailing to Byzantium." LitCharts LLC, January
(https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/arts/design/th 7, 2020. Retrieved April 22, 2020.
e tower-that-enchanted-yeats.html) https://www.litcharts.com/
poetry/william-butler-yeats/sailing-to-byzantium.
• LitChart for "No Country for Old Men" — A guide to a
book that takes its title from this poem. Why do you
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