Sailing to Byzantium

One of Yeats’s most admired poems, 'Sailing to Byzantium' explores the poet’s search for spiritual and mystical renewal, imaged as a journey to the ancient city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul)....

In "Sailing to Byzantium," the aged speaker, "a tattered coat upon a stick," explores mortality. Like Keats in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Yeats contrasts works of art that last through time to the...

The words "a tattered coat upon a stick" suggest a scarecrow. The coat is worn out, and it will become more tattered as it hangs in a field in all kinds of weather. The coat is hanging on a stick...

Here is the text of the poem: That is no country for old men. The youngIn one another's arms, birds in the trees- Those dying generations - at their song,The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded...

The diction Yeats uses in this poem is definitely elevated and reminiscent of courtly, literary, and religious speech. He uses series of three to give a sense of authority and all-encompassing...

"Sailing to Byzantium" is a poem of old age. The elderly speaker feels his powers waning, his life force draining away, and so yearns to travel to a distant land for spiritual refreshment. This...

The "artifice of eternity" is the beautiful mechanical bird the speaker would like to become. In the phrase "artifice if eternity", the word "artifice" means an artificial mechanism. The speaker is...

Yeats published "Sailing to Byzantium" in The Tower (1928), at a time when he himself was facing old age and illness, and four years after he had left his native Ireland on a trip to Italy to view...

The classic poem "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats tells of a man's journey from a country of the young, in which old people are not welcome, toward a holy city called Byzantium. In...

The speaker is old and weary. He wishes to escape from the material world, in which he can no longer live a meaningful existence, and ascend to a higher, more spiritual plane. Byzantium represents...

Yeats depicts nature and the natural world in "Sailing to Byzantium" as representative of the temporal condition of all living things. For Yeats, the natural world is a reflection of the reality...

In this poem the speaker expresses a powerful longing to retreat from modern life and the younger generation, among which, as an ageing man, he feels he has no place. He thus imagines a journey to...

This brilliant poem has clearly a lot more to say than simply the narrow focus that some critics give it concerning the themes of aging. The appeal of the speaker is to the transformative power of...

I believe that this question might be asking about a central theme to the poem rather than a thesis; however, I will try to answer based on the poem having a supposed thesis. A thesis is an...

The rhyme scheme of "Sailing to Byzantium" is consistent throughout and the meter is predominantly iambic pentameter. The fact that there may be deviations from strict iambic pentameter is not...

In William Butler Yeats's poem "Sailing to Byzantium," the place of Byzantium holds the meaning of metaphorical immortality, intellectualism, and artistic pursuit. The speaker in the poem laments...

In the poem "Sailing to Byzantium," Yeats describes the natural world as "no country for old men." It is a fertile place, full of birds and crowded with salmon and mackerel, but also a land where...

The speaker, presumably Yeats himself, is regretting that he is too old to make love! He does not, by any means, disapprove of those who still can and do make love -- "The young in one another's...

The lines you refer to appear in the third stanza of Yeats's poem. All of "Sailing to Byzantium" is written in ottava rima, a meter of Italian origin that translates to the "eight-line rhyme"...

In the poem "Sailing to Byzantium," decay is expressed through the mortality of humans. The speaker ponders the decaying and aging of human flesh compared to the ways in which one can figuratively...

The speaker in this poem by W.B. Yeats is, we may infer from the opening line, an old man, concerned that, in his old age, he has become "but a paltry thing." He feels that to be old is to be...

The emperor is a human being who is being contrasted to Yeats's vision of becoming an immortal golden bird, a mechanical work of art. Because the emperor is human, he will experience such human...

William Butler Yeats's “Sailing to Byzantium” begins with a lament. The speaker is an old man (as was Yeats when he wrote the poem), and he senses that his country no longer has a place for him....

In "Sailing to Byzantium," the theme of art is conveyed through the speaker's desire to be turned into a mechanical golden bird who can sing at the royal court of ancient Byzantium. The speaker...

This poem is so complex that several approaches can be taken all tending toward adding additional understanding of the meaning of the poem. In other words, the more Answers, the merrier! Your...

Silverberg's award-winning novella is based on Yeats's poem of the same name and quotes from it. Both works share similarities: each evokes mystically beautiful and idealized places from another...

Yeats wrote "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" in 1890 and "Sailing to Byzantium" in 1928. The dates are significant: the first poem represents a young man's desire to escape from the pressures of busy...