Sailing to Byzantium is indeed one of the best known lyrics of W.B. Yeats. Written in 1926, it appeared in Yeats 1928 collection The Tower. The title of the poem Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, the capital of Byzantine ruled by the Turkish Sultan and city is now known as Istanbul. Before that, it was Constantinople at around 670 B.C. to 190 A.D., when it was captured by the Romans. The place was known for its works of art, especially mosaic work and gold enameling. The poem is also somehow similar to Buddhism philosophy and also the philosophy of Plato. The reason can be, after he was rejected by Christianity, Yeats own religion was indeed mixture from Irish folklore, Blake’s system, Brahmanism, Buddhism and the culture of the Byzantine Empire.
Sailing to Byzantium is a highly symbolic poem. Yeats writes in his essay, the symbolism of Poetry, "All sounds, all colours, all forms, either because of their preordained energies or because of long association, evoke indefinable and yet precise emotions, or as I prefer to think, call down among us certain disembodied powers”. Byzantium is a
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Yeats says that in the modern world an old man is simply a scarecrow, "A tattered coat upon a stick" which means it is lifeless to someone old. He uses scarecrow to symbolize the collapse in the old age. However, poet tries to keep his spirit alive and encourage himself by telling that in order to leave this lifeless ’scarecrow-status’ and to save old man from being insignificant, the soul must ˝clap its hands and sing.” The song cannot be learnt in any singing school but studying the ˝monuments of unageing intellect” or the ˝monuments of its (intellect and art) own magnificence.” Therefore the speaker has ˝sailed the seas and come to the holy city of Byzantium.” Here, he also uses “songs” and “music” to symbolize