Sailing to Byzantium

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.