Sailing
to Byzantium
- W.B.Yeats
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
poem celebrates art. Yeats critiques the ‘sensual music’ and opts for ‘unageing
intellect’ that has been neglected by humanity. The youth spend their lifetime
in emotions. The various images he is presenting are the young men and women,
birds in trees, salmon, mackerel – fish, flesh or fowl. Life is mortal that
whatever is born has to die one day. Humanity forgets this truth, the poet
laments.
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.
People
do not respect old age and wisdom. An old man is only a ‘tattered coat upon a
stick’. He has no heavy flesh hanging on him. There is only a ‘soul’ in his
frame that claps its hands. Actually, every tatter in his coat signifies an
experience. The coat becomes a symbol for suffering and pain that we go through
in life.
The
old man in tattered cloth becomes a symbol for ascetic life. Yeats projects this image of a life of the
intellect to highlight how such a life
is a misfit in society. He justifies his sailing for Byzantium with this image.
An intellectual being has no place in a sensual society.
A
tatter is a sign representing a scar of the mind. The youth should be willing
to learn from the experiences of the old age. Instead the age-old wisdom of
intellect is ignored. Depressed with the sensual life, he decides to come to
the city of Byzantium which was an intellectual centre.
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.
From the beginning of the poem he is referring to
Byzantium as ‘holy Byzantium’. He calls for the holy sages of the city asking
them to bless him with poetry. He says that his heart has to be purified in the
holy fire so that he will be able to write great poetry. He is depressed with
the desire to write great poetry. He is enslaved by the desires of his body
that is a ‘dying animal.’ The body
blocks his ability to know himself. He asks the sages to lift him up to eternal
glory by helping him break away from the bondage of the body.
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 enamelling
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.
He does
not want to be born again as any living organism. If at all he is born, he
wants to be born as an art form, like the gold shapes made by the Grecian
goldsmiths. These shapes have to be hammered by the artisans. Enamel designs
have to be added. They can be forms of trees or birds that sing of the past,
present and future. This golden bird again is a symbol of a poet who has a
golden voice.
This poem is in content and tone more like
Shelley’s ‘Ode to a West Wind’ where Shelley wants the wind to scatter his
ideas all over the world and make him immortal.
