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William Butler Yeats: Sailing To Byzantium

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Sailing to Byzantium starts with hinting to what is coming up next in the poem. A progression from “that country” to Byzantium, a land where art lasts eternally. Written by William Butler Yeats. Published in 1928. Various philosophical thoughts were tackled. Mortality and Immortality,age and youth,artifice and nature. The poem starts by mentioning “that is no country for old men” the country that the poet referred to is unknown. It could be any country.However, it could be the country where the poet was living in back then. We also learn that our speaker is an old man who feels like he does not belong there anymore and feels alone. The poem draws this romantic image in the minds of the readers. “In one another 's arms, birds in the …show more content…

“An aged man is but a paltry thing” (9) A body that has no use, a body that only has clothes on it. “Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing/For every tatter in its mortal dress”(11,12)Yeats mentions singing which is usually a symbol of love in all it’s forms. Missing a lover, heart broken, in love, lost a lover, suffering out of love. When in fact, he is using the term sing to imply for an inner endure agony. Reasons were mentioned why the writer wants to reach the mystical land,Byzantium. Finally, the writer reaches Byzantium “And therefore I have sailed the seas and come/To the holy city of Byzantium”(15,16). Holy is the expression that Yeats used to refer to Byzantium “Byzantium (Constantinople) was for Yeats a kind of city of the soul,especially of the artist’s soul” (Ell …show more content…

The writer uses more complicated words in this stanza such as perne and gyre. The poet is talking with the sages “Consume my heart away; sick with desire”(21). He wants the sages to purify his soul from the sickness he has. It is a metaphor where the writer asks the sages to teach him how to listen to spiritual music. Then, Yeats asks to be transformed into a piece of art that will have no age and will last forever. The poet uses ‘artifice’ as it is something made up by the human kind. It does not belong to the natural world,it is man-made. Art is the only way the poet can become immortal and stay for forever on this world. The usage of terms like ‘gyre’ and ‘fire’ are repeated consecutively. Assonant terms such as ‘perne’ dim in the ears like the vowels are echoing one

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