Bexyntium

Analysis of the Poem "Byzantium"
by W.B.Yeats
Updated on March 4, 2019
Andrew Spacey
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W.B.Yeats
W.B.Yeats and Byzantium

Byzantium is a symbolic poem that started life as a note in the diary of W.B.Yeats in 1930. He'd
long been an admirer of Byzantine art and culture and wanted to combine this passion with his
belief in the spiritual journey of the artistic human soul.
He wrote:
'Describe Byzantium as it is in the system towards the end of the first Christian millennium. A
walking mummy. Flames at the street corners where the soul is purified, birds of hammered gold
singing in the golden trees, in the harbour dolphins offering their backs to the waiting dead that
they may carry them to Paradise.'
Yeats developed this initial scene into a five stanza dream-like drama that is packed with
symbols, allusion and visual strangeness. It has a sister poem 'Sailing to Byzantium' published
earlier in 1925.
Although the reader is aware of being grounded in some sort of historic city - Byzantium started
life as a Greek colony before becoming Constantinople under the Romans and is now modern
Istanbul - the feeling persists that this could all be someone's nightmare laid bare in the
imagination of Yeats.
The narrative is both impersonal and personal; the speaker commentates from a distance then
comes closer to the reader with detailed first person description. There are repeated words,
ambiguous phrases, allusions to mythology, real experiences and unreal experiences all kept
under control by long and shorter, mostly iambic, rhyming lines.
It is known that Yeats had a great enthusiasm for the ancient culture of Byzantium. He believed it
represented an ideal, that the community who lived and worked there were somehow united in
spiritual and artistic purpose. Artistic achievement was proof of this heightened awareness.
Yeats was also a restless questing individual who, although not conventionally religious in a
churchgoing sense, experimented with and actively pursued alternative spiritual goals. He
became seriously involved with theosophy, the Cabbala, Hermeticism and Spiritualism.
In his esoteric, philosophical work, A Vision, Yeats sets out his world view and how humanity fits
into a cosmic system of existence. For him, the cultural and artistic energies of Byzantium were a
perfect form, peaking at a special time in cyclic history. He wrote:
'I think if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend
it in Byzantium.....I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history,
religious, aesthetic and practical life were one, that architect and artificers spoke to the multitude
and the few alike.'
So what to make of this symbolic fantasy in rhyme? It combines art, history and esoteric themes
that Yeats studied and experimented with for most of his adult life. It weaves mythology and
symbolism in and out of scenes of spiritual transformation.
 The imagery is intense and fantastical, the atmosphere dark and often surreal. Byzantium
has become the setting for a regeneration of human souls that undergo a transformation
involving metaphysical fire and water, which is illumination and purification.
Yeats was provoked into writing Byzantium because a friend of his had a criticism of the previous
poem on this theme: 'Sailing to Byzantium.' Yeats thought that he needed to clarify an issue
concerning the golden bird and its relation to the natural world.
The Nobel prize winner soon got down to the task of creating his poem, using a stanza form that
he'd already used in poems such as 'In Memory of Major Robert Gregory', 'The Tower' (section
II) and 'A Prayer For My Daughter.'
Byzantium was first published in the book Words For Music Perhaps and Other Poems, 1932.
What Are The Themes of Byzantium?

There are several interwoven themes noted in Byzantium:
 Battle Between Immortality and The Creative Process

 Human imperfection and the perfected form of art
 Nature versus Art
 Spiritual Regeneration Through Aesthetics
 Tension Between Terrestrial Life and Soul Life
The Use of Symbolism in Byzantium

Byzantium is full of vivid imagery often taking the form of symbols, which were very important to
Yeats. His studies of esoteric philosophy, mythology and mysticism meant that he was very
much in tune with symbolism.
'Besides emotional symbols, symbols that evoke emotions alone......there are intellectual
symbols, symbols that evoke ideas alone, ideas mingled with emotions.'
from The Symbolism of Poetry (W.B.Yeats) The Dome magazine, 1900

In Byzantium there are several symbols:
The Dome
 Represents perfection, a vault of heaven, divine cosmic order.

Based on the Church of Hagia Sophia in Byzantium.
The Golden Bird
 The unattainable made real, timeless art, artistic freedom from base mortality.
Possibly from a story of a mechanical golden bird that would 'sing' from a tree in the gardens of a
Byzantine emperor.
Flames
 Metaphysical fire, illumination and purging, internal energy and passion, ecstasy.
Yeats wrote in his esoteric essay A Vision...we may escape from the constraint of our nature and
from that of external things, entering upon a state where all fuel has become flame..
Dolphins
 Resurrection, as Guides to Enlightenment, Selfless Guardians of the Unconscious.

Many legends and stories are told are of dolphins forming relationships with humans, helping
them, carrying them, forming profound friendships. Dolphins are also associated with gods and
goddesses, notably Aphrodite and Apollo from ancient Greece.
The Sea
 Soul, Memory, Love, The Unconscious, Universal Unformed Mind.
A Summary of Byzantium
Byzantium is a poem about the imagined spiritual and artistic rebirth of humanity,
which involves the purging of spirits as midnight arrives and their final journey to
enlightenment on dolphins across the sea. Much of the poem is symbolic.
Organic decay and immortality versus eternal perfected art.
This regenerative process has a parallel - the creation of perfect art - and
Byzantium is the only place where these two processes come together as one
never ending struggle for unity of being.
Byzantium
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,

Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,

More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the starlit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit

Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,

Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
Critical Analysis of Byzantium Stanza by Stanza

Byzantium is a mystical and strangely haunting poem full of imagery and symbolism, five formal
looking stanzas that carry an incredible vision.
 For the reader there are great challenges - where to pause, when to take a breath, deeper
breath, longer pause.
 Watch out for the syntax, the way clauses and phrases fit together. The last stanza in
particular is both exclamation and ambiguous sense.
 Although the iambic foot is common, other metrical feet alter the rhythm (trochee, spondee,
pyrrhic).
Since its publication, critics and commentators have poured their ideas and interpretations into
the melting pot, yet the truth is, there is no definitive, overall agreement on the meaning of this
poem.
It is both allegory and dream sequence, esoteric drama and utopian ideal - the flesh made
immortal, enlightenment possible through perfecting the art of life and the life of art.
Stanza 1
The scene is being set. The reader is immediately aware of images being unpurged, which
means not cleaned, still impure, and that they're fading from view as the day becomes night. And
the Emperor it seems has lost control of his soldiers; they're all drunk, sleeping it off.
As the images fade so too do the sounds of the night. It's really late, only the prostitutes are out
(night-walkers) singing, after the gong has sounded. Have they been with the soldiers? Has
discipline broken down?
These first four lines are rather dark but they suggest to the reader stark truths. Do the soldiers
represent power? And the prostitutes lust?
The next four lines help put things into perspective. The speaker has perhaps been walking
through a part of the city, observing but not drawing judgement.
The great dome of the cathedral, lit by moon or star, seems above All that man is ....the human
world isn't worth any respect because it's in turmoil, subject to the vagaries of the blood.
Those two shorter lines, with punctuation, reinforce the idea of human weakness and the last
line, pure iambic, drums home the message with a familiar beat.
As a symbol of the cosmic order the dome represents divine, unchangeable perfection.
Presumably this is the dome of the cathedral (Hagia Sophia), still seen as an architectural
wonder of the world and not the sky itself, sometimes referred to in Christianity as the dome of
heaven, the firmament.
Stanza 2
This is the only stanza in which the first person speaker is revealed...Before me...the rest of the
poem is observation. The image that floats in front of the speaker could be a ghost or a man but
seems to be neither or a mix of the two.
What is clear is that the image is a mummy, a dead person, wrapped in cloth and wound around
a bobbin from Hades (home of the dead, also the god of the underworld).
Yeats is using mummy-cloth as a symbol for life's experiences on earth, part of his esoteric belief
in the gyre, the whirling motion associated with each great age. So the cloth is wound on in one
age and unwound in the afterlife and so on and so forth.
Yeats used a similar idea in the poem All Soul's Night from 1920:
Such thought, that in it bound
I need no other thing,
Wound in mind's wandering

As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.
The winding path is likely the same path mentioned in the Anima Mundi section of Yeats's 1917
book, Per Amica Silentia Lunae (Through Friendly Silence of the Moon), an esoteric work
concerning spiritual and artistic matters.
That path is 'the winding path called the Path of the Serpent' which is the path of natural instinct,
struggle and work most of us have to undertake to reach the Condition of Fire.
What Yeats is saying is that the artist has to exploit the tension between the physical and
spiritual worlds by reaching certain creative thresholds.
To cut a long story very short: The Anima Mundi is the world soul which has to be penetrated by
the artist.
Byzantium with its five stanzas echoes the five part book Per Amica Silentia Lunae which is a
crucial part in Yeats's developing world view.
The summoning of the dead, the image or dry mouthed, breathless ghost, reveals a duality. The
speaker now recognises the superhuman, free of the winding path, free of nature. The ghost may
be dead when seen from an earthly perspective; alive when seen from the spiritual realm.
Critical Analysis of Byzantium Stanza by Stanza

Stanza 3
The golden bird now enters the scene, the symbol of perfection in the creative process. The
reader is assured that it is more miracle than a work of art which implies it is more awesome and
mysterious than it appears as it sits there on a golden bough (of the golden tree?).
This bird is capable of waking up the spirits with its call, just like the cocks of Hades who herald a
new dawn - a revival of that which was dead but is now reborn.
But there's a flipside. This bird can also scorn aloud Common bird or petal/And all complexities of
mire or blood. In other words, perfected art looks down on the organic world of nature, which is
subject to time, emotions and change (the moon embittered).
 The paradox is, that the golden bird, the miracle, is created by man in the first place...the
pinnacle of human craftsmanship created to die for. Art helps humans transcend their
miserable space, gives them a reason to exist. That is the miracle.
Stanza 4
Purification follows the wake up call. The next part of the drama is set on the Emperor's
pavement. It is midnight, the witching hour, and metaphysical flames burn strong.
These flames are not like real fire made from faggots (small bundles of wood) or lit by steel
(spark). No outside influence can affect them, nor they affect anything external, even a sleeve.
These flames work internally, purging the blood-begotten spirits and inducing dance, trance and
agony.
This flame relates to Yeats's Condition of Fire from his Per Amica book in which he writes:
'There are two realities, the terrestrial and the Condition of Fire....in the Condition of Fire is all
music and all rest. Between is the condition of air where images have but a borrowed life, that of
memory or that reflected upon them...'
So the spirits (post-human entities) have their complexities of fury transmuted into dance. This
specific use of fury suggests anger and rage, perhaps part of Yeats's interest over many years in
the spiritual love/hate paradox.
Yeats uses the word complexities three times in the poem, and complexity once, to reinforce the
idea that the human condition is anything but simple - the opposite to the elemental fire.
Further Analysis of Byzantium Stanza by Stanza

Stanza 5
This stanza is a finale, the final phase where the spirit is carried by a dolphin over the sea, as the
cathedral gong is sounded (perhaps for a funeral) and the smithies, the golden craftsmen,
representing artistic energy, attempt to oppose (break) this process.
The dolphin here is mire and blood - sensual and physical - a creature that has empathy with
humans is now representing nature, nature at one with the spirit.
The Byzantine marbles where the dance is taking place, they too oppose the complex human
emotions, relating directly to the preceding stanza. And the images from the first two stanzas
keep on reproducing, just as the sea keeps on being torn and tormented.
Dolphins play a part in ancient Greek mythology, being associated with Apollo and Arion the
poet. The Romans depicted dolphins carrying the dead to the Isles of the Blessed.
Rhyme Scheme in Byzantium

Byzantium is a formal, rhyming poem of five stanzas, each having eight lines. The first four lines
are made up of two rhyming couplets - aabb - whilst the next four lines consist of a couplet
sandwich - cddc - the shorter lines of the couplet enclosed by longer lines.
So the rhyme scheme is : aabbcddc
Yeats was familiar with the stanza form from some of his earlier poems. While most of the end
rhymes are full, for example song/gong...blood/flood which bonds the lines harmoniously, some
are half-rhymes suggesting uncertainty, for example flame/come....bough/crow.
Internal Rhyme
Sounds that are related within the poem bring musicality and echo and texture for the reader.
Byzantium has several levels of internal rhyme. Consider:
unpurged/drunken/human...mere/mire
bound/mouth/mouths...Hades/hail...breathless/death
cocks/common...embittered/complexities
feeds/steel...spirits/singe...faggot/agony
spirit/smithies/bitter...dolphin-torn/gong-tormented
Complete Metrical Analysis of Byzantium

The metre (meter in American English) of Byzantium offers the reader a fascinating challenge
because it does not have a solidly iambic and therefore predictable rhythm.
There are pure iambic pentameter lines but these are in the minority, so, from a rhymical beat
perspective, the read through is different line to line, stanza to stanza.
Let's take a close up look, (with stressed syllables in bold type) :
The un / purged im / ages / of day / recede;
The Em / peror's drun / ken sold / iery are / abed;
Night res / onance /recedes, / night-walk / ers' song
After / great ca / thedral gong;
A star / lit or / a moon / lit dome / disdains
All that / man is,
All mere / complex / ities,
The fur / y and / the mire / of hu / man veins.
The opening line does have a dominant iambic beat but note the pyrrhic foot mid-line which
softens and quietens. Only the second and eighth lines are pure iambic pentameter. In between
is a mix of trochee, spondee and pyrrhic feet; the fourth line is trochee, loud first syllable, falling
second syllable, fading like the gong but the extra strong beat of this seven syllable line is the
word gong itself. The two shorter lines, 6 and 7, compact meaning, and the spondees (two
stressed syllables) reinforce this.
Before / me floats / an i / mage, man / or shade,

Shade more / than man, / more i/ mage than / a shade;
For Ha / des' bob / bin bound / in mum / my-cloth
May un / wind the / winding path;
A mouth / that has / no moi / sture and / no breath
Breathless / mouths may / summon;
I hail / the su / perhuman;
I call / it death- / in-life / and life- /in-death.
The opening line - 9 - is pure iambic pentameter (daDUM daDUM etc), as is the 11th, 13th and
last - 16 - bringing a sense of familiar rhythm which is interspersed with the suddenness of
trochees in alternate lines, the 10th, 12th and 14th. This abrupt emphasis on the first syllable is
pronounced in the 12th and 14th lines, with three trochees each.
Mira / cle, bird / or gol / den han / diwork,
More mir / acle / than bird / or han / diwork,
Planted / on the / starlit / golden bough,
Can like / the cocks / of Had / es crow,
Or, by / the moon / embitt / ered, scorn / aloud
In glor / y of / changeless / metal
Common / bird or / petal
And all / complex / ities /of mire / or blood.
Metrically, the most unusual stanza in the poem. Six out of the eight lines begin with a spondee
or trochee and pyrrhic feet play their part - the opening two lines dropping off in
repeated handiwork.
At mid / night on / the Emp / eror's pave / ment flit

Flames that / no fag / got feeds, / nor steel / has lit,
Nor storm / disturbs, / flames be / gotten / of flame,
Where blood- / begot / en spir / its come
And all / complex / ities / of fur / y leave,
Dying / into / a dance,
An ag / ony / of trance,
An ag / ony /of flame / that can / not singe / a sleeve.
Iambic pentameter controls the opening line, enjambment leading into an alliterative trochee in
the second, whilst the third has a well placed caesura as the pace slows and a double trochee
appears. More three syllable words give rise to those calming pyrrhics in the last two lines
...agony before the iambic feet take over.
Astrad / dle on / the dol / phin's mire / and blood,
Spirit / after / spirit! / The smith / ies break / the flood,
The gold / en smith / ies of / the Emp / eror!
Marbles / of the dan / cing floor
Break bit / ter furi / es of / complex / ity,
Those im / ages / that yet
Fresh im / ages / beget,
That dol / phin-torn, / that gong- / torment / ed sea.
Again an opening line of pure iambic pentameter, followed by a triple trochee; the rise and fall. A
mix of pyrrhic and iamb in the next two lines before an anapaest appears in line 36...Marbles of
the dancing floor...which fairly skips across the line. Spondee, iamb and pyrrhic combine to
produce an exceptional following line whilst the shorter lines use the same three different feet to
intensify a repeat. The final line is wrapped up in iambic pentameter.
“Byzantium”
SUMMARY “BYZANTIUM”
Summary
At night in the city of Byzantium, “The unpurged images of day recede.” The drunken soldiers of the
Emperor are asleep, and the song of night-walkers fades after the great cathedral gong. The “starlit”
or “moonlit dome,” the speaker says, disdains all that is human—”All mere complexities, / The fury
and the mire of human veins.” The speaker says that before him floats an image—a man or a shade,
but more a shade than a man, and still more simply “an image.” The speaker hails this “superhuman”
image, calling it “death-in-life and life-in-death.” A golden bird sits on a golden tree, which the
speaker says is a “miracle”; it sings aloud, and scorns the “common bird or petal / And all
complexities of mire or blood.”
At midnight, the speaker says, the images of flames flit across the Emperor’s pavement, though they
are not fed by wood or steel, nor disturbed by storms. Here, “blood-begotten spirits come,” and die
“into a dance, / An agony of trance, / An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve,” leaving behind
all the complexities and furies of life. Riding the backs of dolphins, spirit after spirit arrives, the flood
broken on “the golden smithies of the Emperor.” The marbles of the dancing floor break the “bitter
furies of complexity,” the storms of images that beget more images, “That dolphin-torn, that gong-
tormented sea.”
Form
The pronounced differences in “Byzantium” ’s line lengths make its stanzas appear very haphazard;
however, they are actually quite regular: each stanza constitutes eight lines, and each rhymes
AABBCDDC. Metrically, each is quite complicated; the lines are loosely iambic, with the first, second,
third, fifth, and eighth lines in pentameter, the fourth line in tetrameter, and the sixth and seventh
line in trimeter, so that the pattern of line-stresses in each stanza is 55545335.
Commentary
We have read Yeats’s account of “Sailing to Byzantium”; now he has arrived at the city itself, and is
able to describe it. In “Sailing to Byzantium” the speaker stated his desire to be “out of nature” and
to assume the form of a golden bird; in “Byzantium,” the bird appears, and scores of dead spirits
arrive on the backs of dolphins, to be forged into “the artifice of eternity”—ghostlike images with no
physical presence (“a flame that cannot singe a sleeve”). The narrative and imagistic arrangement of
this poem is highly ambiguous and complicated; it is unclear whether Yeats intends the poem to be a
register of symbols or an actual mythological statement. (In classical mythology, dolphins often carry
the dead to their final resting-place.)
In any event, we see here the same preference for the artificial above the actual that appeared in
“Sailing to Byzantium”; only now the speaker has encountered actual creatures that exist “in the
artifice of eternity”—most notably the golden bird of stanza three. But the preference is now tinged
with ambiguity: the bird looks down upon “common bird or petal,” but it does so not out of
existential necessity, but rather because it has been coerced into doing so, as it were—“by the moon
embittered.” The speaker’s demonstrated preoccupation with “fresh images” has led some critics to
conclude that the poem is really an allegory of the process by which fantasies are rendered into art,
images arriving from the “dolphin-torn, the gong-tormented sea,” then being made into permanent
artifacts by “the golden smithies of the Emperor.” It is impossible to say whether this is all or part of
Yeats’s intention, and it is difficult to see how the prevalent symbols of the afterlife connect
thematically to the topic of images (how could images be dead?). For all its difficulty and almost
unfixed quality of meaning—the poem is difficult to place even within the context of A Vision—the
intriguing imagery and sensual language of the poem are tokens of its power; simply as the
evocation of a fascinating imaginary scene, “Byzantium” is unmatched in all of Yeats.
Themes, Motifs and Symbols
THEMES, MOTIFS AND SYMBOLS
Themes
The Relationship Between Art and Politics
Yeats believed that art and politics were intrinsically linked and used his writing to express his
attitudes toward Irish politics, as well as to educate his readers about Irish cultural history. From an
early age, Yeats felt a deep connection to Ireland and his national identity, and he thought that
British rule negatively impacted Irish politics and social life. His early compilation of folklore sought
to teach a literary history that had been suppressed by British rule, and his early poems were Odes
to the beauty and mystery of the Irish countryside. This work frequently integrated references to
myths and mythic figures, including Oisin and Cuchulain. As Yeats became more involved in Irish
politics—through his relationships with the Irish National Theatre, the Irish Literary Society, the Irish
Republican Brotherhood, and Maud Gonne—his poems increasingly resembled political manifestos.
Yeats wrote numerous poems about Ireland’s involvement in World War I (“An Irish Airman Foresees
His Death” [1919], “A Meditation in Time of War” [1921]), Irish nationalists and political activists
(“On a Political Prisoner” [1921], “In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz” [1933]), and
the Easter Rebellion (“Easter 1916” [1916]). Yeats believed that art could serve a political function:
poems could both critique and comment on political events, as well as educate and inform a
population.
The Impact of Fate and the Divine on History

Yeats’s devotion to mysticism led to the development of a unique spiritual and philosophical system
that emphasized the role of fate and historical determinism, or the belief that events have been
preordained. Yeats had rejected Christianity early in his life, but his lifelong study of mythology,
Theosophy, spiritualism, philosophy, and the occult demonstrate his profound interest in the divine
and how it interacts with humanity. Over the course of his life, he created a complex system of
spirituality, using the image of interlocking gyres (similar to spiral cones) to map out the
development and reincarnation of the soul. Yeats believed that history was determined by fate and
that fate revealed its plan in moments when the human and divine interact. A Tone of historically
determined inevitability permeates his poems, particularly in descriptions of situations of human
and divine interaction. The divine takes on many forms in Yeats’s poetry, sometimes literally (“Leda
and the Swan” [1923]), sometimes abstractly (“The Second Coming” [1919]). In other poems, the
divine is only gestured to (as in the sense of the divine in the Byzantine mosaics in “Sailing to
Byzantium” [1926]). No matter what shape it takes, the divine signals the role of fate in determining
the course of history.
The Transition from Romanticism to Modernism
Yeats started his long literary career as a romantic poet and gradually evolved into a modernist poet.
When he began publishing poetry in the 1880s, his poems had a lyrical, romantic style, and they
focused on love, longing and loss, and Irish myths. His early writing follows the conventions of
romantic verse, utilizing familiar rhyme schemes, metric patterns, and poetic structures. Although it
is lighter than his later writings, his early poetry is still sophisticated and accomplished. Several
factors contributed to his poetic evolution: his interest in mysticism and the occult led him to
explore spiritually and philosophically complex subjects. Yeats’s frustrated romantic relationship
with Maud Gonne caused the starry-eyed romantic idealism of his early work to become more
knowing and cynical. Additionally, his concern with Irish subjects evolved as he became more closely
connected to nationalist political causes. As a result, Yeats shifted his focus from myth and folklore
to contemporary politics, often linking the two to make potent statements that reflected political
agitation and turbulence in Ireland and abroad. Finally, and most significantly, Yeats’s connection
with the changing face of literary culture in the early twentieth century led him to pick up some of
the styles and conventions of the modernist poets. The modernists experimented with verse forms,
aggressively engaged with contemporary politics, challenged poetic conventions and the literary
tradition at large, and rejected the notion that poetry should simply be lyrical and beautiful. These
influences caused his poetry to become darker, edgier, and more concise. Although he never
abandoned the verse forms that provided the sounds and rhythms of his earlier poetry, there is still
a noticeable shift in style and tone over the course of his career.
Motifs
Irish Nationalism and Politics
Throughout his literary career, Yeats incorporated distinctly Irish themes and issues into his work. He
used his writing as a tool to comment on Irish politics and the home rule movement and to educate
and inform people about Irish history and culture. Yeats also used the backdrop of the Irish
countryside to retell stories and legends from Irish folklore. As he became increasingly involved in
nationalist politics, his poems took on a patriotic tone. Yeats addressed Irish politics in a variety of
ways: sometimes his statements are explicit political commentary, as in “An Irish Airman Foresees
His Death,” in which he addresses the hypocrisy of the British use of Irish soldiers in World War I.
Such poems as “Easter 1916” and “In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz” address
individuals and events connected to Irish nationalist politics, while “The Second Coming” and “Leda
and the Swan” subtly include the idea of Irish nationalism. In these poems, a sense of cultural crisis
and conflict seeps through, even though the poems are not explicitly about Ireland. By using images
of chaos, disorder, and war, Yeats engaged in an understated commentary on the political situations
in Ireland and abroad. Yeats’s active participation in Irish politics informed his poetry, and he used
his work to further comment on the nationalist issues of his day.
Mysticism and the Occult
Yeats had a deep fascination with mysticism and the occult, and his poetry is infused with a sense of
the otherworldly, the spiritual, and the unknown. His interest in the occult began with his study of
Theosophy as a young man and expanded and developed through his participation in the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn, a mystical secret society. Mysticism figures prominently in Yeats’s
discussion of the reincarnation of the soul, as well as in his philosophical model of the conical gyres
used to explain the journey of the soul, the passage of time, and the guiding hand of fate. Mysticism
and the occult occur again and again in Yeats’s poetry, most explicitly in “The Second Coming” but
also in poems such as “Sailing to Byzantium” and “The Magi” (1916). The rejection of Christian
principles in favor of a more supernatural approach to spirituality creates a unique flavor in Yeats’s
poetry that impacts his discussion of history, politics, and love.
Irish Myth and Folklore
Yeats’s participation in the Irish political system had origins in his interest in Irish myth and folklore.
Irish myth and folklore had been suppressed by church doctrine and British control of the school
system. Yeats used his poetry as a tool for re-educating the Irish population about their heritage and
as a strategy for developing Irish nationalism. He retold entire folktales in Epic poems and plays,
such as The Wanderings of Oisin (1889) and The Death of Cuchulain (1939), and used fragments of
stories in shorter poems, such as “The Stolen Child” (1886), which retells a parable of fairies luring a
child away from his home, and “Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea” (1925), which recounts part of an
epic where the Irish folk hero Cuchulain battles his long-lost son by at the edge of the sea. Other
poems deal with subjects, images, and themes culled from folklore. In “Who Goes with Fergus?”
(1893) Yeats imagines a meeting with the exiled wandering king of Irish legend, while “The Song of
Wandering Aengus” (1899) captures the experiences of the lovelorn god Aengus as he searches for
the beautiful maiden seen in his dreams. Most important, Yeats infused his poetry with a rich sense
of Irish culture. Even poems that do not deal explicitly with subjects from myth retain powerful
tinges of indigenous Irish culture. Yeats often borrowed word selection, verse form, and patterns of
Imagery directly from traditional Irish myth and folklore.
Symbols
The Gyre
The gyre, a circular or conical shape, appears frequently in Yeats’s poems and was developed as part
of the philosophical system outlined in his book A Vision. At first, Yeats used the phases of the moon
to articulate his belief that history was structured in terms of ages, but he later settled upon the gyre
as a more useful model. He chose the image of interlocking gyres—visually represented as two
intersecting conical spirals—to symbolize his philosophical belief that all things could be described in
terms of cycles and patterns. The soul (or the civilization, the age, and so on) would move from the
smallest point of the spiral to the largest before moving along to the other gyre. Although this is a
difficult concept to grasp abstractly, the image makes sense when applied to the waxing and waning
of a particular historical age or the evolution of a human life from youth to adulthood to old age. The
symbol of the interlocking gyres reveals Yeats’s belief in fate and historical determinism as well as
his spiritual attitudes toward the development of the soul, since creatures and events must evolve
according to the conical shape. With the image of the gyre, Yeats created a shorthand reference in
his poetry that stood for his entire philosophy of history and spirituality.
The Swan
Swans are a common Symbol in poetry, often used to depict idealized nature. Yeats employs this
convention in “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1919), in which the regal birds represent an unchanging,
flawless ideal. In “Leda and the Swan,” Yeats rewrites the Greek myth of Zeus and Leda to comment
on fate and historical inevitability: Zeus disguises himself as a swan to rape the unsuspecting Leda. In
this poem, the bird is fearsome and destructive, and it possesses a divine power that violates Leda
and initiates the dire consequences of war and devastation depicted in the final lines. Even though
Yeats clearly states that the swan is the god Zeus, he also emphasizes the physicality of the swan:
the beating wings, the dark webbed feet, the long neck and beak. Through this description of its
physical characteristics, the swan becomes a violent divine force. By rendering a well-known poetic
symbol as violent and terrifying rather than idealized and beautiful, Yeats manipulates poetic
conventions, an act of literary modernism, and adds to the power of the poem.
The Great Beast
Yeats employs the figure of a great beast—a horrific, violent animal—to embody difficult abstract
concepts. The great beast as a symbol comes from Christian iconography, in which it represents evil
and darkness. In “The Second Coming,” the great beast emerges from the Spiritus Mundi, or soul of
the universe, to function as the primary image of destruction in the poem. Yeats describes the onset
of apocalyptic events in which the “blood-dimmed tide is loosed” and the “ceremony of innocence is
drowned” as the world enters a new age and falls apart as a result of the widening of the historical
gyres. The speaker predicts the arrival of the Second Coming, and this prediction summons a “vast
image” of a frightening monster pulled from the collective consciousness of the world. Yeats
modifies the well-known image of the sphinx to embody the poem’s vision of the climactic coming.
By rendering the terrifying prospect of disruption and change into an easily imagined horrifying
monster, Yeats makes an abstract fear become tangible and real. The great beast slouches toward
Bethlehem to be born, where it will evolve into a second Christ (or anti-Christ) figure for the dark
new age. In this way, Yeats uses distinct, concrete imagery to symbolize complex ideas about the
state of the modern world.
Byzantium by William Butler Yeats: Summary and Poem
Byzantium is a description of the city bearing that name, but it is also a symbol of paradise as well as
Purgatory. Byzantium usually discussed as a companion piece to Sailing to Byzantium written four
years later, takes up the actual process by which the artist creates his images and, in a bold stroke by
Yeats compares the creative process to the soul’s journey after death.
William B. Yeats (1865-1939)
Summary of Stanza I
The ordinary gross objects of the work-a-day world go into the background. The drunken soldiers of
the emperor are now asleep. The voices of the night become faint; the night -walker's song comes to
an end, after the sound of the gong of the great Cathedral (St. Sophia). A star studded or moonlit
dome of the sky scorns all that man is and all his complexities and the passion and the dross of
human life (the violence and decay and impermanence of man's life).
Stanza I
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
All that man is,
Summary of Stanza II
Before the poet appears a vision-perhaps a man or shade or a visible ghost of an invisible spirit, a
purified spirit which has unwound the coffin cloth and then has cast away its impurities and become
a purified spirit. It is a lifeless image as also an immortal being and the poet calls it death in-life and
life-in-death.
Stanza II
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
Summary of Stanza III
The poet sees a sort of miracle. Is it a golden bird or is it something else or is it an unusual bird on
starlit golden bough? It can crow like the cocks of hell, or scorn others birds of petals and all the
changes which flesh is heir to.
Stanza III
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Summary of Stanza IV
At midnight on the Emperor's pavement appears a fire which is not fed by fuel or started by striking
a piece of iron against a flint stone. No storm can disturb these flames which are begotten of blood
(according to medieval belief) or are self-generating. Here the spirits are purified of all their passions
in the flames. There the purgatorial dance of spirit begins and ends in a sort of peace and joy. The
spirits thus purified gain eternal peace.
Stanza IV
At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
Summary of Stanza V
Sprits sit astride on the dolphins with their mire and blood and reach the beach of Byzantium. The
blacksmiths of the emperor impose order on these spirits. The marbles of the dancing floor break
little furies of complexity, and those images that beget fresh images and also the dolphin torn, that
gong tormented sea.
Stanza V
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
Fresh images beget,

Byzantium by William Butler Yeats: Critical
Appreciation
The poem was written in 1930 after a lapse of about four years from the date of his writing the
poem entitled Sailing to Byzantium. Byzantium is apparently a sequel to the Sailing to Byzantium.
In the interval between 'Sailing to Byzantium' and the present poem, the poet had further
developed intellectually. Byzantium, therefore, is naturally an improvement upon the earlier
composition, Sailing to Byzantium.

Byzantium was the capital of the Eastern wing of the Holy Roman Empire. It was famous for its
mosaic art and gold enamelling. But in this poem Byzantium is not a city of concrete reality. It is a
creation of the mind which exists in imagination only. It is a place beyond the world of teeming
millions, free from the limitation of time and space.
Both are the poems of escape from a world of flux to a kingdom of permanence and in both the
poet is trying to solve a personal problem. In the first he seeks to quell the desires troubling his
heart in old age, while in the second he 'wanted to warm himself back to life' after a severe
illness which brought him very close to death.
The poem opens in the silence of the night, when the great song of St. Sophia has announced
the time appropriate to spiritual meditation and divine revelation. The images of daytime, such as
the drunken soldiers of the king, reminiscent of the savage British soldiers terrorizing the Irish
peasantry, stained with the blood and fury of the busy day light. The noises and images peculiar
of the night in a great city, such as the song of night-walkers and brawl of the revelers have also
melted in the calm atmosphere. The poet is now, face to face with the Great Dome of St. Sophia,
which suddenly assumes the aspect of the sky, bedecked with the light of the moon and stars
and looking down upon the human life on the earth with multiplicities, love and hate, strife and
confusion, peculiar to the everyday life of men and women.
As the poet contemplates the Dome of 'Divine wisdom' with a secret desire to explore its
mysteries, he describes an image floating before him. It is faint and vague, a shadow in
comparison with a concrete human body, but an image when compared to a shade. The poet
keeps its identity deliberately vague as Milton does in the case of the description of Death
in Paradise Lost. This much is clear that it is one of the spirits from the Land of the Dead, which
like the 'Sages in God's holy fire' in 'Sailing to Byzantium' can retrace their steps (unwind the
winding path) and come to the earth, which they have left behind. They have become purged of
the memories of the earthly life which were woven round them like the 'mummy cloths' round the
Egyptian mummies or the skein of thread round the bobbin. This spirit, with a mouth without
moisture or breath can summon other ghosts from Hades as the Shade of Tiresias does in
Homer's Kingdom of the blessed to help Ulysses. The poet needs a guide to lead him to the
various regions of the kingdom of the dead. Such a guidance was prescribed by all the mystic
and occult systems.
'Shade' appears to be incorporeal spirit, but with certain properties of

communication; Image would seem to be the shade in a more or less materialized condition. The
poet hails the superhuman guide, who is antithetical to man, living the life of the man's death and
the death of man's life, and starts on his pilgrimage under the felt presence of this spirit.
The third stanza presents the vision of heaven, and the golden bird here, more a 'miracle' than
'an artifice' planted on the starlit golden branch of the mystic tree, is a purified soul. Its substance
is gold, the purest and imperishable substance in alchemy, the symbol of the transmuted soul. It
is a bird not made by the hand of man, but hammered into shape on the divine smithy in
purgatory.
The fourth stanza unrolls the spectacle of purgatory, where the souls are flitting about like flames
of fire, which is unearthly. It is not the fire raised by faggot for the burning of martyrs, nor the one
struck by the steel in friction. It is the unearthly fire of purgatory, which no storm can disturb and
which purges the soul into the likeness of flame as described by Dante in his Divine Cometly. To
this place of purgation come the spirits from the human world and undergo the process of the
gradual liberation through "dreaming back". This dreaming back, in which the soul reviews all its
memories, sins and experiences, is represented by a dance which, at times, is marked by 'an
agony of trance', where the soul burns in the eternal fire of remorse. This fire of agony which
consumes the spirits is internal, not external, it burns the heart of the sinner but cannot burn 'a
sleeve'. In this sense the flames or the fire-like souls are begotten of flames, that is the flame
raging in their minds. The flame which covers them is the flame issuing out of their own minds.
In the last stanza the poet has reached the brink of purgatory and can catch a clear view of the
vast ocean of time-and-space-bound life through which 'blood-begotten' spirits are seen moving
forward on the backs of dolphins, the proverbial escorts of souls to the kingdom of the dead. The
scene has been familiarized by artists as well as the makers of the Roman tombs. But dolphins
themselves are also the symbols of earthly love, 'of the mire and blood' of the mortal life and as
such belong to the element of the ocean, which they are traversing. The flood of life beats upon
the borders of 'the smithy', where the souls are purged and shaped and the water of life cannot
penetrate; while, on the marble floor, where the souls 'dance in an agony of trance' they are
gradually divested of 'that flaming shirt' that agonising and cohesive stain of the fury, passion and
lust of life which human hand cannot remove. The dancing images are begetting fresh images of
their life experiences in the process of 'dreaming back'. Each memory comes back as an image
in a dream. In the last line the poet has come back to the shores of the ocean of life, which is
agitated by the conflicting claims of flesh (dolphin-torn) and spirit (gong-tormented), the
extremities between which the moral man swings like a pendulum.
Byzantium Summary and Analysis: A Poem by William Butler Yeats
Read below our complete notes on the poem “Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats. Our notes cover
Byzantium summary, themes, and a detailed analysis of Byzantium Poem by W.B Yeats.
Byzantium Introduction:
Byzantium presents an ideal state for humans which is beyond human life. The poet describes this
poem as “Byzantium as it is the system towards the end of the first Christian millennium. A walking
mummy flows at the street corners where the soul is purified, birds of hammered gold singing in the
golden tree, in the bower, offering their backs to the wailing dead that they may carry them to
Paradise.”
Byzantium Summary:
Stanza 1
The unpurged images of the day recede
The picture of the day to day objects which are mere objects having gross nature are going to the
background because something important is coming so their value is fading away.
The Emperor`s drunken soldiers are abed

The soldiers of the Emperor who are drunk heavily are now fast asleep. They do not move and it
shows the night at its full calm and peak.
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers` song
When the cathedral (church of St. Sophia) has struck the sound of mid night, so the music and songs
of people of in the midnight also fade away and the night walkers` song also fade away. the night
walkers` can be analyzed in two ways; one as usual night walkers who are rushing towards home
while the others are the prostitutes.
A starlit or moonlit disdains
All that man is
All mere complexities
The fury and the mire of human veins
The starlit is the reference to the cathedral that is dislikes all that human possesses, the cathedral is
contemptuous towards the nature and feelings of humans. It does not contemplate human and his
intricacies. The cathedral stands here for spirituality while man stands for modernist perspective.
Summary of Stanza 1:
In this first stanza, the description is of night and the great gong of St. Sophia’s cathedral has
declared that it is the time suitable and exact for spiritual meditation. The images of the drunken
soldiers who are asleep remind the savage British soldiers who used to torment and torture the Irish
peasantry. He says that the noise of the great gong of the cathedral has subdued the noise of the
night walkers and their songs. The dome of the cathedral which the poet faces is looks as decorated
with the stars and is looking at the human life of earth. The human life which is the combination of
confusion and chaos is looked by this dome and it disdains this life.
Stanza 2
Before me floats an image, man or shade
The poets says that it this time of the night when it is a right time for meditation and he has entered
to the spiritual city of the Byzantium a vision appears before him. He gets confused after seeing the
vision because it seems like a man and a shadow. Whether it a shadow or a man, the poet seems
baffled in deciding about.
Shade more than man, more image than a shade
This shade which means a spirit is more than a man in appearance as its outlook and the composure
is more than a man.
For Hades` bobbin bound in mummy cloth
May unwind the winding path
This spirit which has come from the region of death has unwound the coffin cloth and threw away all
the impurities and has become a purified spirit which has been through purgatory.
Breathless mouth may summon
I hail the superman
I call it death in life and life in death

The poet then explains this spirit and says that this image of spirit is very lifeless because it does not
breathe, it is in no current of life. But at the same it seems an immortal being as well. So the poet
calls it life in death and death in life image or spirit.
He sees an image of human body but it appears to be a shade. He says that this image is more like a
shade. He praises this superhuman because it has come to take him to the spiritual city of
Byzantium. The poet feels the presence of this Great Spirit at the start of hid pilgrimage as very
encouraging.
Stanza 3
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork
More miracle than bird or handiwork
Planted on the starlit golden bough.
Then the poet says that he says a miracle. He sees a golden bird but promptly says that is something
else than a bird. It is unusual bird golden bird ‘set upon a golden bough’ which Yeats has described in
his earlier poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ as well.
Can crock like the cocks of the Hades Crow?
In glory metal
And all complexities of mire or blood
He says that this bird can crock like the crow which has come from the region of death and scorn
other birds of petals and all the changes which flesh means mortal beings are destined to pass
through. So this birds is spiritual and is casting away the material impurities.
Summary of stanza 3:
This stanza depicts the description of the heaven. He sees the golden bird and calls it a miracle, it is
planted on the golden branch of the mystic tree. The bird is made up gold which is the purest
substance and it demonstrates that the bird is a purified soul. The bird here is used as a symbol of
purified souls and is given a divine shape by the great artisans of heaven.
Stanza 4
At Mid night on the Emperor`s pavement flit
Flames that no faggots feeds; nor steel has lit it
The poet says around midnight fire appears on the Emperor`s pavement and it seems that this fire
has not been lit by burning wood or the friction of any steel against these move about stones.
He adds that no storm can interfere of disturb this fire and the flames which have been lit though
self-generating.
And all complexities of fury leave
He says that all the spirits come to this fire because they want to cast away their impurities.
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve

These spirits are purified from all the complexities in this fire. They come out as purified spirits. Then
these spirits begin their dance of purgatory because they are about to be purified. This dance ends in
a soothing joy and peace. And in the end these spirits are purified.
This stanza depicts the scenes of purgatory. The fire is lit which is not caused by burning wood or
friction of steel with the pavement. The spirits are being passed through this purgatory fire in order
to get purified. This fire is heavenly and the main purpose of this fire is to cast away all the impurities
and complexities of the souls.
Stanza 5:
Astraddle on the dolphin`s mire and blood
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood
These spirits one by one sit in the dolphins with their mire and blood and reach the beach of
Byzantium.
The golden smithies of the emperor!
Those image that yet,
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn that gong-tormented sea.
These spirits are imposed order upon by the blacksmiths of the Emperor. The marbles of the floor
where they dance break little furies of complexity and those images beget fresh images.
Summary of stanza 5:
In this stanza, the poet finds himself close to purgatory. He sees that blood begotten spirits are
moving towards this fire in the back of dolphins. The poet describes the shore of ocean of life in the
last line. It is a conflict between flesh and spirit. It symbolizes the state of man between life and after
life.
Byzantium Themes:
Immorality:
The major theme of this immorality. The poem seems to express a desire to escape from the decay
and tedium of cyclical nature. He wants to transform his own consciousness and find mystical union
with the golden mosaics of a medieval empire.
Byzantium Analysis:
It was written in 1930 and published in The Winding Stair and other Poems.
The poem comprises of 5 stanzas of 8 each.
The meter in not regular.
The first, second, third, fifth and eighth line of each stanza follow iambic pentameter. The fourth
lines follow tetrameter and the sixth and seventh follow iambic trimeter.
The rhyme scheme is AABBCDDC.
Byzantium is a description of the city that bears the name and is also a symbol of paradise as well as
purgatory.
Byzantium is the old name of Constantinople or Istanbul which was once the capital of the Roman
Empire.
The poem stands for the need of suffering and purification.
The golden bird symbolizes the eternity and glory of art like the dome mentioned in the first stanza.
The poem presents an escape from a world of flux to a kingdom of permanence.
Poetry analysis: Byzantium, by William Butler Yeats
Bernd RiebePosted on Oktober 8, 2017 Veröffentlicht in Literatur — 1 Kommentar ↓
Byzantium
The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers’ song

All that man is,
For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
Astraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
Fresh images beget,
W.B. Yeats
W.B. Yeats, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum
William Butler Yeats’s “Byzantium” is a companion poem to to “Sailing to Byzantium” and it

chronicles the city of Byzantium towards the end of the first Christian Millennium. It has in fact the
same theme that the reader encounters in another of Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming”.
“Byzantium” pays tribute to the miracle of the work of art; the poem itself has overcome the “bitter
furies of complexity”. The complexity of human flesh is turned into the artefact which preserves it
and thus evokes the poet’s immortality in his art.
“Byzantium” is bursting with imagery of permanence and immortality in art. While the city of
Byzantium stands as the backdrop to all its violent contrasts, the poet indulges in the exploration of
death and the wisdom of the past. The mosaics depict the spiritual experience stabilised by the
knowledge and technique of the artist that ignite the flame of artistic creation.
The notion of permanence is fully delineated by the invocation of the nightingale, the traditional
symbol of permanence as described in Keats’s poem. The goldsmith’s art can thus give the
permanence and significance in life unattainable by flesh.
At night in the city of Byzantium, “The unpurged images of day recede.” The drunken soldiers of the
Emperor are asleep, and the song of night-walkers fades after the great cathedral gong. The “starlit”
or “moonlit dome,” the speaker says, disdains all that is human—”All mere complexities, / The fury
and the mire of human veins.” The speaker says that before him floats an image—a man or a shade,
but more a shade than a man, and still more simply “an image.” The speaker hails this “superhuman”
image, calling it “death-in-life and life-in-death.” A golden bird sits on a golden tree, which the
speaker says is a “miracle”; it sings aloud, and scorns the “common bird or petal / And all
complexities of mire or blood.”
At midnight, the speaker says, the images of flames flit across the Emperor’s pavement, though they
are not fed by wood or steel, nor disturbed by storms. Here, “blood-begotten spirits come,” and die
“into a dance, / An agony of trance, / An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve,” leaving behind
all the complexities and furies of life. Riding the backs of dolphins, spirit after spirit arrives, the flood
broken on “the golden smithies of the Emperor.” The marbles of the dancing floor break the “bitter
furies of complexity,” the storms of images that beget more images, “That dolphin-torn, that gong-
tormented sea.”
The pronounced differences in “Byzantium” ’s line lengths make its stanzas appear very haphazard;
however, they are actually quite regular: each stanza constitutes eight lines, and each rhymes
AABBCDDC. Metrically, each is quite complicated; the lines are loosely iambic, with the first, second,
third, fifth, and eighth lines in pentameter, the fourth line in tetrameter, and the sixth and seventh
line in trimeter, so that the pattern of line-stresses in each stanza is 55545335.
You might have read Yeats’s account of “Sailing to Byzantium”; now he has arrived at the city itself,
and is able to describe it. In “Sailing to Byzantium” the speaker stated his desire to be “out of
nature” and to assume the form of a golden bird; in “Byzantium,” the bird appears, and scores of
dead spirits arrive on the backs of dolphins, to be forged into “the artifice of eternity”—ghostlike
images with no physical presence (“a flame that cannot singe a sleeve”). The narrative and imagistic
arrangement of this poem is highly ambiguous and complicated; it is unclear whether Yeats intends
the poem to be a register of symbols or an actual mythological statement. (In classical mythology,
dolphins often carry the dead to their final resting-place.)
In any event, we see here the same preference for the artificial above the actual that appeared in
“Sailing to Byzantium”; only now the speaker has encountered actual creatures that exist “in the
artifice of eternity”—most notably the golden bird of stanza three. But the preference is now tinged
with ambiguity: the bird looks down upon “common bird or petal,” but it does so not out of
existential necessity, but rather because it has been coerced into doing so, as it were—“by the moon
embittered.” The speaker’s demonstrated preoccupation with “fresh images” has led some critics to
conclude that the poem is really an allegory of the process by which fantasies are rendered into art,
images arriving from the “dolphin-torn, the gong-tormented sea,” then being made into permanent
artifacts by “the golden smithies of the Emperor.” It is impossible to say whether this is all or part of
Yeats’s intention, and it is difficult to see how the prevalent symbols of the afterlife connect
thematically to the topic of images (how could images be dead?). For all its difficulty and almost
unfixed quality of meaning—the poem is difficult to place even within the context of A Vision—the
intriguing imagery and sensual language of the poem are tokens of its power; simply as the
evocation of a fascinating imaginary scene, “Byzantium” is unmatched in all of Yeats.
Bernd Riebe, 2018
William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures
of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later
years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary
Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its
chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel
Committee described as “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit
of a whole nation.” (from Wikipedia)
Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower Summary and Analysis of Sailing to Byzantium
The country that the speaker is in does not suit the old. It is full of bounty, with fish in the water and
birds in the trees. The young and reproductive are caught in the earthly cycle of life and death. They
do not heed ageless intelligence. An old man can be mere pathos. To escape this fate and to get
away from his too-vital country, the aged speaker has sailed to Byzantium. Once arrived, he calls out
to the elders who are part of God’s retinue. He asks them to move in a gyre and take him away to
death. He has a living heart fastened to a dead body, and as such cannot live.
Once the speaker has died, his body will no longer be organic, but fashioned of metal, like the
statues that preserve dying emperor, or perhaps instead molded into a mechanical bird, which will
sing to the lords and ladies of Byzantium.
Analysis
This is Yeats’ most famous poem about aging--a theme that preoccupies him throughout The Tower.
The poem traces the speaker’s movement from youth to age, and the corresponding geographical
move from Ireland, a country just being born as Yeats wrote, to Byzantium. Yeats felt that he no
longer belonged in Ireland, as the young or the young in brutality, were caught up in what he calls
“sensual music.” This is the allure of murder in the name of republicanism, which disgusted Yeats.
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, which Yeats draws on for its decadent associations. The
Byzantine Empire was centered on Constantinople, later renamed Istanbul. The speaker thinks that
by escaping to Byzantium, he can escape the conflict between burning desire and a wasted body.
Once there, he pleads to God’s “sages” to take away his life, meaning his body. This stanza is
suggestive of Yeats’ religious beliefs, as he wrote this collection after a turn to theosophy. The idea
of elders waiting upon God is not familiar from any Western religion, but would be acceptable under
theosophy, which holds that all spiritualities hold some measure of truth. Yeats imagines this
process as being consumed by a healing fire that will allow his body to take on any form he wishes
when it is finished. His first wish, to become a statue, seems too static. His second, to become a
mechanical bird, alludes to the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus. Theophilus, according to legend, had
just such mechanical birds. It is thus the poet’s wish to be granted a body immune to death and to
sing forever.
Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower Themes
Magic
Magic is the primary spiritual form in this collection, replacing religion as a place to turn in a
time of distress. Yeats was brought up in a Protestant family, but turned to theosophy when
he became an intellectual. Theosophy, a set of beliefs that declares that all religions hold
some measure of truth, tends toward the fantastical in practice. Yeats attended séances and
exercised what he called “automatic writing”: writing funneled through a poet. These
magical trappings are evident in many poems in The Tower, including the speaker’s ability
to call on the “sages” in “Sailing to Byzantium” or the ghosts in “All Souls’ Night.”
Magic provides one possible solution to the crisis that the poet puzzles over throughout this
collection: aging. As he points out in “The Fool by the Roadside,” only a fool thinks that life
can be made to go from the end point to the beginning, instead of the other way around.
But the poet casts himself as this fool, and it seems to be his earnest wish to reverse the life
cycle. When he is attended upon by the sages in “Sailing to Byzantium,” a reversal, a rebirth,
does seem possible. The poet will be reborn through healing fire, like the phoenix.
Fishing
The activity of fishing appears throughout this collection as a metaphor for youth, life, and
health. Yeats uses it to counteract the images of aging. The most common, variations on the
image of “tattered rags on a stick,” is the inverse of fishing. Instead of controlling the rod, a
symbol of virility, the aged man is himself trapped, no longer the fisher but the fished.
Fishing holds not only a symbolic but also a historical significance for Yeats, who used to fish
during his childhood in the hills of County Sligo. The fish leaping in the water is a common
trope for fertility, and Yeats’ special mention of salmon leaping upstream is biologically
correct (there are many salmon in Irish rivers) and also a possible comment on the
Irishman’s stubborn and heroic nature. In “The Tower,” Yeats leaves the fishermen his pride
in his “will.” Although he is no longer one of the young, he seems to identify with and
admire them.
Destruction
In keeping with the collection’s more general theme of death, Yeats supplements the
images of decay with those of active destruction. In addition to nature and time playing an
active part in the destruction of the human body, other humans may also choose to destroy
one another. In many poems, the speaker seems afraid of the former and horrified by the
later.
Part of the horror of destruction is an intrinsic belief in the goodness of beauty and the
human body. In “Nineteen Hundred Nineteen,” Yeats describes the destruction of an
ancient statue and the mob’s complete disregard for its beauty or historical significance. Of
course the more salient destruction that the IRA and the Black and Tans (they, too, in many
senses could be considered a mob) carried out was killings. In mourning the destruction of a
beautiful statue, the poet creates a symbol for the slain human and affirms its beauty and
significance. Images of destruction, whether they be killings as in “Meditations in a Time of
Civil War” or less direct references, appear most frequently in the more political poems in
this collection.
The Moon
The moon appears so often in this collection that its significance must be weighed. It is the
countersymbol to the destruction that plagues much of the rest of the collection; it is the
female force. But although it is a peaceful symbol, the moon also has an edge of danger.
Yeats often compares the moon to a beautiful woman, or draws parallels with Maude
Gonne, the woman who refused to love him back. Yeats plays on the word "lunacy" to
support the ancient myth that madness and the moon were tied together. This, together
with the moon's feminine associations, implies that women, too may drive men mad. This is
in keeping with the theme of unrequited lust.
Unrequited Lust
Many poets write of unrequited love, but Yeats, in this collection, confronts unrequited lust.
Part of the experience of aging seems to be the loss of physical attractiveness. In “A Man
Young and Old,” the speaker mourns, “My arms are like the twisted thorns/ And yet there
beauty lay.” The speaker has been in and out of love, but desire for young women still
remains. This is part of the contradiction of a young spirit trapped in an old man’s body.
Yeats uses the word “lecher” to describe a person in this situation; it is clear that although
he mentions this sort of lust in many of the poems he is aware of the moral aspect of the
unequal lust. In “Owen Aherne and his dancers” it seems there is a possibility a young
girl might “mistake her childish gratitude for love,” but the speaker resolves to “let her
choose a young man and all for his wild sake.” His strongly expressed desire, not fully but
half returned, makes this ending seem generous and self-denying. This resolution does not,
however, prevent this sort of desire from reoccurring in other poems.
Immortality and Classicism
A poet so preoccupied with the issue of aging is naturally also preoccupied by the issue of
immortality. Critics have explained the shift away from Irish and toward Classical mythology,
once again, with Yeats' friendship with Pound and his interest in the modernist literary
movement. Putting this aside, however, Irish mythology is much more vague about
immortality than Greek or Latin: in which the gods, and some of their favored mortals, live
forever. This may explain the hopeful color that references to Juno and Athena add to
some of these poems, and the explicitly classical-themed "Oedipus at Colonus."
Danger
Danger is ever-present in this collection, whether it be through age, brokenheartedness, or
violence. Much of Yeats' description of danger has to do with a heightened time scheme: all
men age, but the speaker in "Youth and Age" seems worried about imminent death. All men
die, but the speaker in "Meditations in a Time of Civil War" is likely to face sudden death at
the hands of intruders.
Danger, characterized by a heightened urgency, creates uncertainty, and that is a dominant

mood in The Tower. Continuity is represented in this collection by art, especially
sculpture, which is a stand-in for culture more generally. Once this is destroyed by the mob,
there is no telling what or whom the mob will destroy next. This mood is not confined to
Yeats alone, but is visible in much of the literature written directly after WWI.
Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Tower Summary and Analysis of The Tower
The speaker decries the absurdity of the contrast between his old body and his young spirit. He feels
more passionate and inspired than ever - even more so than when he was a boy and went fishing in
the mountains of Western Ireland. Nevertheless, he feels he must say goodbye to poetry and choose
reason instead: it is more becoming to his age. He walks to and fro atop a castle and looks out over
the countryside. He sees where the wealthy Mrs. French once lived. Her servant, who knew her
wishes well, once cut off the ears of a rude farmer and brought them to her on a covered dish.
When the speaker was young, some men spoke of a legendary peasant girl, who was the most
beautiful in the area. One drunk man talked of her often, and in the middle of a drinking session got
up to seek her out. He mistook the moon for her lovely face, and drowned in a lake. The man who
told the speaker these songs was blind, like Homer.
The girl may well be mistaken for the sun or moon, because, says the speaker, she has betrayed all
living men. The speaker himself created Hanrahan twenty years ago. The character was destined to
stumble through villages, lamed. When it was the speaker’s turn at cards, he shuffled the pack into a
pack of hounds, which then turned into a hare. Hanrahan followed these creatures—
The speaker interrupts his own story, crying “enough!” He must remember a man so distraught that
neither love nor music nor clipped ears could make him feel better. This man is a ruined master of
the house. Before the house went to ruin, servants dressed for war came to the house. The speaker
questioned them all, wondering whether they raged against age as he now does. They give no
satisfactory answer. The speaker is happy to be left with Hanrahan. He calls up Hanrahan, from the
knowledgeable dead, to tell him whether one thinks more often of a woman won or lost. A woman,
once lost, is an irretrievable mistake.
The speaker draws up his will, leaving men who fish tirelessly his pride. His pride is not political, or
tied up with slaves or tyrants, but that of Grattan and Burke. His pride is as refreshing as an
unexpected shower, as poignant as a swansong. He mocks Plato and Plotinus. He is prepared to die
with a combination of ancient poetry and of the love of women, both of which make man a
superhuman. He leaves his faith and pride to these young fishermen. He will now prepare his body
and his mind for death, or, worse, the death of those whom he has loved.
Analysis
In one of the most complicated poems of his career, Yeats tries to come to terms with his age and
with the changes his country is undergoing. “The Tower” is presented in a fragmented style, a proto-
modernist device that shows Yeats’ move away from romantic Irish mythology toward a sparser
approach. This change was partially affected by his friendship with Ezra Pound, who encouraged
Yeats to seek out alternatives to the flowery language that characterized his earlier collections.
The ideal of manhood and youth is introduced in the first stanza through the representation of the
speaker: a young man. This image is pastoral, with the young man fishing in the fertile streams of
Ireland. The iconic mountain of Ben Bulben tells the reader that this is western Ireland, where Yeats
used to vacation during summers away from London. The speaker’s turn to Plato and reason seems
forced. Put together with the narrative element of cutting off the farmer’s ears, the implication is
that the speaker’s decision is unnatural and made in a top-down fashion. The poet can impose rules
on himself, just as the rich can on the poor.
The lovely peasant girl, whom the speaker also refers to as Helen (as in Helen of Troy), is
undoubtedly Maude Gonne. Gonne, a revolutionary who was the great love of Yeats’ life, did not
return his love. She appears often in Yeats’ poetry, often symbolized by or associated with a moon:
something lovely, feminine, untouchable, and capable of causing madness. The peasant who drowns
in pursuit of her is proof of her power.
The speaker breaks away from the narrative of the girl to present a new character who meets a
similarly grim fate. This is yet another modernist device. The speaker breaks down the illusion that
the poem is or could be truthful, and displays his ability to create characters at will. Hanrahan is an
intertextual character, appearing in other Yeats works. He is an Irish peasant everyman, suffering the
afflictions of lameness (whether physical or moral) and alcoholism that were rampant in early 20th-
century Ireland. Hanrahan shows a flash of glory, however, in the transfiguration of cards into a pack
of hounds. This is an allusion to Cuchulain’s (a famous hero of Irish mythology) hounds, which were
part of his army. These are quickly turned into a hare, an object of English-style hunting, so the
peasant’s empowerment is all too brief.
The hare symbol transitions into a description of a great house. In Ireland, a large ruined or empty
house always refers to the Protestant Ascendancy: English families that lived in Ireland and formed a
ruling elite. Most of these manors were destroyed by the IRA during the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-
1921. In “The Tower,” ghosts of warlike men haunt the house, and it is these ghosts, as well as other
people who were old in the speaker’s childhood, that he queries about age. They do not wish to
answer, so he dismisses their memory, saying he needs only Hanrahan to answer. The poem finishes
with the question of Maude Gonne again. Even a reader who does not know the biographical details
can read in the title of the poem that Yeats is in mourning over a lost woman. The phallic image is as
lonely as can be.
Byzantium Poems W. B. Yeats
Irish poet, memoirist, short story writer, translator, and essayist.
The following entry presents criticism on Yeat's Byzantium Poems, “Sailing to Byzantium” (1926) and
“Byzantium” (1928). See also, "The Second Coming" Criticism.
Known as the Byzantium poems, “Sailing to Byzantium” and “Byzantium” are considered two of
Yeats's more accomplished poetic works. Written in the autumn of 1926, “Sailing to Byzantium” was
published in his poetry collection, The Tower, in 1928. The second poem, “Byzantium,” was written
in 1930, while the poet was recovering from illness. Viewed together, critics assert that the two
poems underscore Yeats's yearning for immortality, as well as the beauty of art over the fleeting and
carnal nature of sensuality. Composed near the end of the poet's life, the pieces are perceived as his
reaction to aging, illness, and death.
Plot and Major Characters
“Sailing to Byzantium” and “Byzantium” are viewed as complementary poems that utilize the rich
imagery of the historical city of Byzantium to explore topics such as death, aging, and the
transcendence of artistic expression. In “Sailing to Byzantium,” the poet invokes the holy city, which
was once the eastern capital of Christianity. He describes it as a city for the young, replete with
sensuality and life and unaware of the grim specter of death. The aging poet sails the seas to arrive
at the city, where he envisions himself transformed into a golden bird that will sing to the emperor
or the citizens of the city from a golden tree. Written four years later, “Byzantium” opens on the
image of the impressive dome of Santa Sophia, a monument to faith that rises above the teeming
life below. The poet then explores the image of a wrapped mummy, using the wrapping of the
corpse to create a “perning” action in which the spinning mummy “unwinds” the intricacy of earthly
life. Next, he refers back to the singing bird in “Sailing to Byzantium,” as the poet emphasizes the
transcendence of art over mortal existence. “Byzantium” ends by describing dolphins—usually
considered as traditional porters of the soul—swimming in to the shore bearing “spirit after spirit” to
its purgation.
Major Themes
Together, “Sailing to Byzantium” and “Byzantium” are viewed as statements on spiritual and artistic
rebirth, as well as symbolic representations of the creative poetic process. In fact, in his
autobiographical notes, Yeats claimed the poems reinvigorated his interest in poetry as well as life.
The motif of the journey is an oft-discussed one in the poems. On one level, “Sailing to Byzantium”
depicts the old poet's departure for the ancient city and the later “Byzantium” reflects his thoughts
once there. On another level, “Sailing to Byzantium” traces the development of the old poet from an
aged, impotent man into a glorious, eloquent bird; this is interpreted to be Yeats's rejection of the
bleakness of old age in favor of the beauty and glory of poetry. Moreover,...
Themes and Meanings
(CRITICAL GUIDE TO POETRY FOR STUDENTS)
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While the symbol may leave the analytical mind that eschews speculative reasoning high and dry,
Yeats’s poetry is not incapable of yielding precise meanings, even if they remain debatable. If one
can balance the symbolic coordinates, “Byzantium” yields a rich harvest.
It is generally accepted, for example, that Byzantium is for Yeats a city of art to which the soul might
escape whenever the pressures or sheer corruption of the world in particular and the physical
universe in general become too much to bear. Much of this sort of reading of “Byzantium” is based
on pairing that poem with comments Yeats made in a long prose work entitled A Vision (1925, 1937),
as well as with another, earlier Yeats poem, “Sailing to Byzantium,” which does seem to express a
desire to escape from the decay and tedium of cyclical nature and which also mentions a golden
bird.
On a wholly spiritual level, “Byzantium” clearly does contrast the mere mundane level of daylight
vision with the infinitely richer possibilities that contemplations of the eternal and the miraculous
offer. If the poem seems to trivialize day-to-day despairs and travails, it does so by asserting that
enduring glories that are as yet unimagined, albeit hinted at in the symbols and icons of artistic and
religious traditions, will eventually reward the patient soul.
The less one categorizes the nature of these glories—whether they are religious or aesthetic—of the
eternal and spiritual or of the temporal...
James A. Notopoulos (essay date November 1945)
(TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERARY CRITICISM)
SOURCE: “‘Sailing to Byzantium’,” in Classical Journal, Vol. 41, No. 2, November, 1945, pp. 78-79.
[In the following essay, Notopoulos investigates the sources for the imagery found in “Sailing to
Byzantium.”]
W. B. Yeats', “Sailing to Byzantium,” one of his best poems, is also a noteworthy Platonic lyric.1 The
contrast in the poem between the “sensual music” and the “monuments of unageing intellect” is the
mature expression of a Platonic mood, shaped and given impetus to expression by Yeats' interest in
Plato and Plotinus, his friendship with Stephen MacKenna, and his study and admiration of
MacKenna's great translation of Plotinus.2 In his desire to be gathered into the “artifice of eternity”
and in his construction of a Platonic Reality, Yeats has chosen the imagery of Byzantium which held a
powerful grip on his imagination:
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.
We have preparation for the heavily inlaid Byzantine imagery of this, the last stanza of the poem, in
a passage of Yeats' A Vision:
I think if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it
in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato. I think I
could find in some little wine-shop some philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my
questions, the supernatural descending nearer to him than to Plotinus even. … I think that in early
Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic and practical life
were one, that architect and artificers … spoke to the multitude and the few alike. The painter, the
mosaic worker, the worker in gold and silver, the illuminator of sacred books, were almost
impersonal, almost perhaps without the consciousness of individual design, absorbed in their
subject-matter and that the vision of a whole people.3
This intense admiration for “the monuments of Byzantine magnificence” is the result of Yeats' visit
to Sicily in November 1924 when he saw the Byzantine mosaics of Monreale and the Capella Palatina
at Palermo.4 His biographer, Hone, says that he saw Yeats in Rome in February 1925. “There was a
week of sightseeing, and as in Sicily, he followed the enchantment of mosaics and glass, which he
compared with the ‘hammered gold and gold enamelling’ that he had seen at Ravenna seventeen
years before, when visiting Italy with Lady Gregory.”5 Yeats also sailed the seas and came “to the
holy city of Byzantium,” at least in his imagination, which was nourished, Coleridge-like, on books. As
Coleridge, in a gloss to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (line 132), refers to the “Platonic
Constantinopolitan Michael Psellus” so Yeats appends a note to the final stanza of “Sailing to
Byzantium” which reads, “I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a
tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.”6
The Poem
(CRITICAL GUIDE TO POETRY FOR STUDENTS)

“Byzantium” is written in five eight-line stanzas that are, in their metrical precision and complex
rhyme scheme, reminiscent of the unique stanzaic patterns of the early nineteenth century odes
composed by such English Romantic poets as William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John
Keats. The twentieth century Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats certainly shares many traits with
those, and other, nineteenth century precursors. Nevertheless, despite all the intensity of its
emotion and the rich intricacies of its imagery, “Byzantium” is hardly the sort of effusive outburst
one has come to associate with the ode; the speaker seems to be more engulfed in his vision than in
any attempt to share its emotional quadrants with the reader.
“Byzantium” takes its name from an ancient city upon whose site the Roman Emperor Constantine
constructed his eastern, Christian capital about c.e. 330. Called Nova Roma, that city eventually
became known as Constantinopolis and is the modern-day Turkish city Istanbul. For more than a
thousand years the capital of the Byzantine Empire, it was regarded as the premier city of the
Western world. While Yeats prefers the city’s older name, there is no doubt that his Byzantium is
medieval Constantinople.
As the poem begins, night is falling. The day’s sights and even the night’s sounds draw back, leaving
the reader’s undistracted senses free to explore other realms of reality and ranges of experience.
Soon it is after midnight. The soldiers’ nightly revelries have ended, although a “night walker,” who
may simply be someone out very late or a streetwalker plying her trade, is singing, and in the “great
cathedral,” the Hagia Sophia, the gong that calls the faithful to prayer has already rung.
In this dreamy atmosphere, pregnant with mystery and anticipation, “A starlit or a moonlit dome
disdains” all that human beings are—human complexities and the “fury and the mire” of human
veins. That dome may be the night sky or it may be the dome of the Hagia Sophia. Earthbound in this
most worldly of cities, an imperial capital, the speaker reminds the reader of that extreme emblem
of power and glory, the boundless heavens that dwarf the scope of the human imagination, let alone
human accomplishments, let alone one mere mortal.
As if he, too, has been called to prayer and is inspired by this setting to free his spirit of its sensory
limitations, the speaker now has a vision. He cannot be certain if the image he sees is a man or a
shade—that is, a ghost—although it is an image apparently so awesome in its reality that it
overwhelms him to such an extent that he does not know if he is alive or dead—or what life or death
is. Yielding to the strength of his vision, he “hail[s] the superhuman;/ I call it death-in-life and life-in-
death.”
The vision increases in its intensity as the darkened physical world all about him is transfigured. He is
“seeing” with the mind’s eye—although it would be more proper, given the quasi-religious tone of
much of the imagery thus far, to imagine the so-called third eye of the mystic. The reader now sees a
golden bird that may be a miracle, a real bird, or a man-made, mechanical bird. The speaker decides
that it is a miraculous bird; it is “Planted on the starlit golden bough” and “by the moon embittered.”
The imagery recalls the disdainful dome of the opening stanza, for the bird also “scorn[s] aloud” the
day’s commonplaces and “all complexities of mire or blood.”
In the fourth stanza, the visionary frenzy increases as the reader is swept up with the speaker “into a
dance,/ An agony of trance.” Flames are flitting on the pavement. These are not the result of the
fires of our physical world, however, but are manifestations of the fire of the spirit. Although they...
Tag Archives: Byzantium Analysis
WB Yeats ❧ Byzantium
September 25, 2014
By upinvermont
in Byzantium, Criticism, Iambic Dimeter, Iambic Pentameter, Poetry, Rhyme, Spiritual
Tags: Analysis of Byzantium, Annotated Byzantium, Byzantium, Byzantium Analysis, Byzantium

Annotated, Close Reading, Close Readings by Patrick Gillespie, William Butler Yeats, Yeats at
PoemShape
8 Comments
william_butler_yeats_2So, I’ve been reading more Yeats. In particular, I’ve been trying to get a
foothold in Byzantium. Whereas Sailing to Byzantium has the feeling of conviction, Byzantium reads
more like a hoary Rand Mcnally triptych having no relevance to anyone but Yeats. In her book, Our
Secret Discipline, Vendler spends 11 full pages explicating Byzantium without eliciting the least
desire to read it. Thankfully, unlike her analysis of Sailing to Byzantium, she seems to have gotten
over her obsession with Yeats’ penis. She doesn’t write such chestnuts as “[Yeats] hopes to regain
respect by emphasizing the power of the rigid Byzantine “monuments of unageing intellect. [p. 31]”
(The italics are mine.) Which, when one thinks about it, is a little odd.
Anyway, what’s the point of Byzantium? Is it really just the description of souls arriving in some
concocted city by a fevered poet drunk on his own “spiritualist” kool-aid? Is it just spiritualist naval
gazing? Was Yeats really trying to communicate anything relevant? John Unterecker, in his Reader’s
Guide to W.B. Yeats, has this to say about Byzantium’s inception:Yeats wrote “Byzantium” in Italy
after his Malta Fever collapse. The first notes for the poem are recorded in his 1930 diary under the
heading “Subject for a Poem” and are dated April 30:
Describe Byzantium as it is in the system towards the end of the first Christian milliennium. A
walking mummy. Flames at the street corners where the soul is purefied, birds of hammered gold
singing in the golden trees, in the harbor, offering their backs to the wailing dead that they may
carry them to paradise. [p. 217]
And that’s that. It really does sound like the note taking of an aspiring tour guide. But Yeats must
have had something more in mind. Unterecker mentions a letter from Sturge Moor, to Yeats:
“As Ursula Bridge notes, Yeats was almost certainly goaded into this stanza by Sturge Moore’s April
16, 1930, letter which had attacked the golden bird of “Sailing to Byzantium” as an essentially
natural thing: “Your Sailing to Byzantium, magnificent as the first three stanzas are, lets me down in
the fourth, as such a goldsmith’s bird is as much nature as as man’s body, especially if it only sings
like Homer and Shakespeare of what is past or passing to to come to Lords and Ladies.”
And here’s the relevant exchange, from here, in its entirety:
[From T. Sturge Moore to Yeats, April 16, 1930] Have you read Santayana’s Platonism and the
Spiritual Life? He thinks the Indian philosophers the most spiritual, but his arguments leave me
skeptical as to whether mere liberation from existence has any value or probability as a
consummation. I prefer with Wittgenstein, whom I don’t understand, to think that nothing at all can
be said about ultimates, or reality in an ultimate sense. Anyway I can say nothing that approaches
giving me satisfaction, nor am I satisfied by what others say. Your “Sailing to Byzantium,”
magnificent as the first three stanzas are, lets me down in the fourth, as such a goldsmith’s bird is as
much nature as a man’s body, especially if it only sings like Homer and Shakespeare of what is past
or to come to Lords and Ladies.
[Yeats responds, October 4, 1930] My dear Sturge Moore,
Yes, I have decided to call the book Byzantium. I enclose the poem, from which the name is taken,
hoping that it may suggest symbolism for the cover. The poem originates from a criticism of yours.
You objected to the last verse of “Sailing to Byzantium” because a bird made by a goldsmith was just
as natural as anything else. That showed me that the idea needed exposition.
Matthew Schultz, in his essay Aestheticism in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats: The Two Byzantium Poems,
goes further , writing that the disagreement was “the point of departure for “Byzantium”. Yeats own
words would seem to underscore this assertion. Was Yeats really so taken aback by Moore’s critique
of a single image that he was prompted to write Byzantium — a kind of refutation? This suggests
two thoughts: First, that the image of the golden bird is central to Sailing to Byzantium, and that this
is the image/idea around which the second poem is constructed. So, let’s take a look at the poem.
I’ve tried to type it in without typos and have used the Richard J. Finneran edition of Yeats’ poetry:

Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song
All that man is,
Dying into a dance,

An agony of trance,
Fresh images beget,
Scansion
Yeats follows a fairly strict metrical pattern in the poem, suggesting a more formal or serious tone.
The underlying pattern is iambic and the underlying meter of the longer lines is iambic
pentameter.2nd Byzantium 1rst Stanza
But for the first stanza, in which the sixth line is dimeter, the overall pattern for the sixth and
seventh lines are iambic trimeter, Any explanation for why Yeats chose this pattern is going to be
subjective (lest it come from Yeats). My own thought is that the short lines give the stanzas a sense
of momentum and succinctness, especially where Yeats wants to focus the reader and listener on
the content. That’s the way, at any rate, I myself tend to think of shorter lines, especially rhyming
lines. Based on the rhyme scheme, one could think of the stanza as being comprised of two
quatrains. The second quatrain is an Italian Quatrain, four lines that enclose a couplet. In this case,
the couplet is:
All that man is,
All mere complexities…
The short lines combined in a couplet draw the reader’s mind to a central assertion: man is mere
complexities. Yeats is already drawing a contrast between the temporary ambitions of man and the
eternal artifice of Byzantium. Vendler states that the rhymes and rhythms of the poem change
unpredictably. I’m not seeing it. Each of the stanzas follow the pattern established by the first. This is
hardly unpredictable. The rhyme scheme remains the same from beginning to end. How is this
unpredictable? If she’s only going to consider the first stanza, then by that measure every poem is
unpredictable until we read it.
The stanza’s that follow all follow the same pattern and so, if only to make less work for myself, I
haven’t scanned them. Just ask, however, if you have any questions concerning the others.
The First Stanza
Byzantium is a sequel or continuation of Sailing to Byzantium and I don’t see how it’s possible to
interpret Byzantium without reference to the first poem (though Vendler seem untroubled by such
exigencies). Vendler tells us that “‘Byzantium’ gains by being read together with ‘Sailing to
Byzantium’,” [p. 47] yet makes no effort to connect her interpretation of the first poem to the
second. The first poem, she tells us, is an expression of Yeats’ “self-disgust” and his “exclusion—by
reason of impotence—from the country of heterosexual intercourse” [p. 34]. By the second poem,
Yeats is completely over it (or Vendler is). Surely, given that the two poems are so obviously
connected, one would expect her to find evidence, or hints at least, of the same thematic material in
both. She doesn’t, not as far as Yeats’ “impotence” goes.
For my own part, I interpreted the first poem somewhat differently. To be brief, I interpreted
Byzantium as Yeats’ argument for a new art. The poetry of youthful song and passion no longer
captivated him. Such country is no place for old men. Instead, he turns his art to a more eternal
kind—purified by the goldsmiths hammer—and for the spiritually transfigured reader, lords, ladies,
Empress and Emperor (which I interpreted as meaning us). Byzantium isn’t so much a poem
announcing Yeats’ departure from the world of “blood and mire”, but an invitation for readers to
join him in his—a purified and eternal world.
How does this interpretation hold up in lieu of Byzantium?
Yeats doesn’t really describe Byzantium in Sailing to Byzantium. He suggests. He wants to be

gathered into the artifice of eternity. Perhaps the atmosphere is suffused with god’s holy fire “as in
the gold mosaic of a wall.” There will be a golden bough on which a bird, the artifice of Grecian
goldsmiths, will sing to Lords and Ladies. The reader can easily be forgiven for imagining a stately,
beautiful, and eternal city full of art and accomplishment.
Well.
You would be wrong. Yeats clears up that little misconception right from the get-go:
Now, and this is the thing that gets me every time I read the poem: What in the hell are drunk
soldiers doing at the gates of paradise—an eternal world of fixity? Obviously, the mistake is in
thinking that Byzantium is meant to be interpreted as heaven or eternity. It is however, in Yeats’
imagination, a destination for the dead (or souls), as well as the living. They arrive “astraddle on the
dolphin’s mire and blood”. And what’s with dolphins? It only gets weirder from there. We have a
moonlit dome that “disdains /all that man is,” (though apparently not the drunken soldiers tasked
with guarding it — from what, we don’t know—and not that they could anyway, being drunk). In the
second stanza, Hades’ bobbin shows up, bound in mummy-cloth, and look, there goes Abbot and
Costello, running for their lives, from the mummy and from the “miracle bird” that’s crowing like a
cock out of Hell (or Hades rather).
What are we supposed to make of this place?
Having read various interpretations on the web and in critical books, I have to say (and this is only
my impression) almost nobody has a clue. Vendler puts up a pretty good front, treating the poem
with the utmost earnestness and seriousness, but I’m not convinced. To me, the one critic/reader
who comes closest to teasing out what Yeats might have had in mind (and it’s not like I know) was
William Empson. Empson’s article, in the critical journal Grand Street, was published in 1982 and
much of the “material” that follows is drawn from the article–but the observations are largely my
own. In order to pull off his feat of Yeatsian-cryptography, Empson referred to Yeats’ drafts, along
with letters. He states from the outset that it’s not something he usually approves of (and neither do
I) but Yeats’ Byzantium calls for desperate measures. The first question to be dealt with is why
Byzantium? Here’s a city that, far from being considered a mecca of culture and civilization, inspired
the word Byzantine.
Synonyms:
Machiavellian, artful, balled up, calculating, canny, collusive,
complex, complicated, confounded, confused, connivent, conniving,
conspiring, contriving, convoluted, crabbed, crafty, cunning,
daedal, designing, devious, elaborate, embrangled, entangled,
fouled up, foxy, gordian, guileful, implicated, insidious,
intricate, intriguing, involuted, involved, knotted, knotty,
knowing, labyrinthian, labyrinthine, loused up, many-faceted,
matted, mazy, meandering, messed up, mixed up, mucked up,

multifarious, pawky, perplexed, plotting, ramified, roundabout,
scheming, screwed up, shrewd, slick, sly, snarled, sophisticated,
stratagemical, subtile, subtle, tangled, tangly, twisted, up to,
wily
At the height of its infamy, Byzantium was famed for political intrigue, decadence, corruption,
despotism, assassination and unrivaled venality. And this is where Yeats wants to go? Yeats’s was
obviously aware of history’s verdict (hence the drunk soldiers), but the city’s artistic legacy appears
to have assumed, to him, mythical proportions.
“There is a record of a tree of gold with artificial birds which sang. The tree was somewhere in the
Royal Palace of Byzantium. I use it as a symbol of the intellectual joy of eternity, as contrasted with
the instinctive joy of human life.” [Yeats and Byzantium p. 69]
In 1932, lecturing in America, Yeats elaborates:
“Aristotle says that if you give a ball to a child, and if it was the best ball in the market, though it cost
but sixpence, it is an example of magnificence; and style, whether in life or literature, comes, I think,
from excess, from that something over and above utility which wrings the heart. In my later poems I
have called it Byzantium, that city where the saints showed their wasted forms upon a background
of gold mosaic, and an artificial bird sang upon a tree of gold in the presence of the emperor; and in
one poem I have pictured the ghosts swimming, mounted upon dolphins, through the sensual seas,
that they may dance upon its pavements.” [Ibid p. 70]
Empson then references a first draft but, for whatever reason, doesn’t follow up on the really (in my
opinion) revealing “second stanza”.
Now the day is come I will speak on those
Loves I have had in play…That my soul loved
That I loved in my first youth
For many lovers have I taken off my clothes
For some I threw them off in haste, for some slowly and indifferently
and laid down on my bed that I might be…
but now I will take off my body

That they might be enfolded in that for which they had longed
I live on love
That which is myself alone
O let me be enfolded in my …
and how shall we ever grow every…
As Empson notes, the handwriting is hard to read. What interests me is how Yeats draws a
fascinating parallel between taking off his clothes to make love, and taking off his body for an
unspecified (in this extract at least) spiritual union. In other words, Yeats is sexualizing the spiritual
union. That is to say, the pleasurable, naked decadence Yeats experienced as a youth when making
love is comparable to the pleasure of spiritual union in old age. And to really drive home my point:
Yeats’s longing for spiritual union isn’t that of the ascetic [rigid in self-denial and devotions; austere;
severe] but that of the decadent, pleasure seeking lover. Now, you’re obviously asking yourself,
where might Yeats find a place that represents both pleasure seeking decadence and transcendent
spiritual art? Yeah. Byzantium.
So, with this mind, let’s revisit the first stanza. Once again, the opening lines:
Night’s resonance recedes; night walker’s song…
We now know that this Byzantium is not meant to be interpreted as a sexless, spiritually cleansed
stand-in for paradise. Yeats liked women, liked sex, and liked sensuality. To him, it would seem, a
spiritual realm without its own sexual and sensual parallels was decidedly not heaven. And yes, this
flatly contradicts Vendler’s suggestion that “there are no women in the heaven of sages,” (besides
being contradicted by the mosaics of Sant’Apollinare). Empson, having access to the drafts of
Yeats’s Byzantium, reveals the extent to which Yeats originally wanted to emphasize the not-to-be-
confused-with-Paradise nature of his Byzantium:
“…it turns out that the earlier drafts made the point much more strongly: “all that roaring route of
rascals,” “the emperor’s brawling soldiers,” “the last benighted robber or assassin fled,” “the
drunken harlot’s song.” Critics who still insist that this town is Paradise must be struggling to hush up
a scandal.” [Ibid. p. 86]
So, the drunken harlot’s song became the nightwalker’s song. Not only is there beer and sex in
Byzantium, but both are for sale. What’s not to love? And what does “The unpurged images” mean?
One way to to understand this is by examining Yeats’s spiritual belief system (which I find tediously
arcane and can’t be bothered with). The second is through the context of the poem.
Here’s how I interpret the matter. Yeats, when referring to life as we know it, uses words like
complexity, and phrases like mire and blood ; the fury and the mire of human veins; complexities of
mire or blood; complexities of fury.
Mire 1. To cause or permit to stick fast in mire; to plunge or fix in mud; as, to mire a horse or wagon.
[1913 Webster] 2. Hence: To stick or entangle; to involve in difficulties — often used in the passive
or predicate form; as, we got mired in bureaucratic red tape and it took years longer than planned.
So, given this not-so-subtly negative summation of life, it stands to reason that it’s these
complexities which are to be purged. And what does he mean by complexities? We get some idea by
the words and phrases he uses to describe the “opposite”. In Sailing to Byzantium, he writes:
“…gather me Into the artifice of eternity”.
In Byzantium he writes:
…A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is…
…bird or golden handiwork,
[Can] scorn…
Fresh images beget,
Aside: Just for a moment, I want to point out a sexual crosscurrent that may or may not be present
in Yeats’s choice of imagery. While Yeats liked women, liked sex and liked sensuality, one might be
forgiven for also pointing out that, like many men, Yeats may also have been conflicted. Use of
words like blood, mire and complexity all suggest the female body, sex, and reproduction. It’s
certainly not a stretch to suggest that a woman’s reproductive organs could be construed as “a
mire” — a damp and heated swamp Sex, menstruation, child-birth, all involve bodily fluids (and a
variety of complexities) that might have alternately attracted and repelled Yeats. I wouldn’t call it
misogyny, just “issues” (if you know what I mean). In that respect, it wouldn’t be a coincidence that
Yeats uses the word “beget”. He is, after all, referring to physical life when he refers to “Those
images”, and the necessity that it procreate/beget new life (fresh images) in the mire—the womans’
body—of her blood, fury and complexity. If this surmise is true, then it makes perfect sense that he
would write (in an unpublished sketch): “now I will take off my body”. In other words, Yeats wants
sex without the blood, mire and messiness of sex. Perhaps Byzantium reveals Yeats’ conflicted
attraction and repulsion to sex and women (if subliminally), and not just his spiritual aspirations. It’s
not that he wants to escape the pleasure of sexuality, it’s the blood and messiness that repels him.
He wants an idealized world of sensuality that is “clean” and changeless.
So, getting back to purging, it stands to reason that purging involves cleansing the soul(?) of the mire
and blood that is the transient body. What remains? Right. This is what every criticism and analysis
of the poem merrily glosses over. Either that, or we are referred to Yeats’s ‘cones’ (which also does
nothing to explain what Yeats had in mind). Frankly, I don’t even think that Yeats knew. He may
coyly distinguish an image from a shade, but that still doesn’t tell us what they are —a soul? – a
speck of consciousness? – a disembodied body? What? All we know is that whatever remains, once
we are “purged”, is not mired in blood, fury or complexity. We are presumably “purified”. We exist
(whatever that “we” is) in an Aristotelian(?) and sensual realm (art/artifice of eternity?) that is
changeless, permanent and ‘not-complex’. If one thinks of it figuratively (which is much easier) then
one might say that what remains (of Yeats for example) is to be found in the changeless perfection
of his poetry. But Yeats took these matters literally and I doubt that immortality on a bookshelf was
what he had in mind – even if he flirted with the notion in his poetry (see my previous post). And
frankly, I don’t know that any of this matters. It may simply be enough to assert that Yeats is
contrasting the ever-changing, transient realm of the furious physical with an idealized, unchanging,
intellectual/sensual realm of art and artifice. In order to get there, you have to be purged. As in
Sailing to Byzantium, this purgation involves acknowledging the purer, more permanent song of the
miracle bird (hammered by the Emperor’s goldsmiths) and leaving behind the song of “The young/In
one another’s arms, birds in the trees,/— Those dying generations”.
Think of it this way, perhaps: To be purged is to surrender the sensuality of the body to the
sensuality of the mind.
So, getting all the way back to “unpurged images”. By images, Yeats is referring to physical/bodily
life. They are unpurged because they still sport in the blood and mire that is bodily life, that is beer
and paid sex.
All that man is,

The first of twelve strokes announces the window in which “images” may be purged. The dome, an
image of changelessness and perfection (appealing to the sensuality of the mind), disdains the
bodily, Like the miracle bird’s song, and like Yeats’s poetry, the bell is a call to purgation. Vendler
very nicely describes what Yeats might intend with the dome:
“…the dome stands for that which is purged of such complexities, that which harbors within itself
ideal images already purged and pure.” [Our Secret Discipline, p. 39]
The Second Stanza
Now. Things are going to get really interesting because I’m going to shock the world (or get myself
lynched) by proposing a way to interpret these lines that, to my knowledge, has never been offered
before. Here’s the thing: Every critic and close reader who has read this poem (and not without good
reason) assumes that Yeats, in the poem as it was finally published, was referring to a mummy (and
that’s tied every last one of them into interpretative knots). Yeats himself, before he even began
drafts of the poem, wrote:
“Describe Byzantium as it is in the system towards the end of the first Christian milliennium. A
walking mummy. Flames at the street corners…” [the emphasis is my own]
However, I argue that Yeats changed his mind. As Empson himself stated, we must be wary when
consulting a poet’s drafts and perhaps even avoid doing so. The reason is that the drafts not only
give us clues to what the poet intended (in the course of working out the poem), but also reveal
what he decided to change and leave out. I can’t stress that enough. Really. The ultimate arbiter of a
poem’s meaning must remain the final, completed poem.
In Byzantium, in the poem as we have it, there is no mummy.
Let that sink in.
Every critic, Empson, Vendler, Bloom, Unterecker, et al… (because, in my opinion, of decades of
misreading) have assumed that the mummy of the drafts made it into the final poem. They all read
the poem the same way. However, the obvious observation is that Yeats’s final draft never actually
states that the image/shade is a mummy. In fact, it’s possible to read these lines in a wholly different
way and in a way that’s not self-contradictory.
Here we go:
That’s a complete sentence and it ends in a semicolon. Even Yeats was aware that a mummy is not a
man, no matter how beautiful the Pharaoh’s linens. A mummy is a skeleton encased by dessicated
flesh. Yeats must also have realized the absurdity of his initial drafts. He tried the following:
(May better sommon me) Can merrily summon me
To adore…
But rejected them. Merrily? A Mummy? Even Empson found this imagery absurd, writing:
“Merrily” carries a strong suggestion that we have not heard the whole story. Even without this
unnerving detail, it would be probable that if we had the science fiction long-short we would find the
mummy at least giving some gruff directions to the poet. But, even so, it would be quite unsuitable,
and extremely unlike what happens to Virgil…” [Yeats and Byzantium, p. 88]
Clearly, this was going nowhere. My reading is that Yeats changed the mummy — the guide — to a
shade, “shade more than man, more image than a shade”. He also, I think, realized that it made
more sense for him to summon the guide, rather than the other way around. But, you protest, what
about the next line?
Here’s the thing: Whose to say these lines are referring to the shade? I think this is fundamentally
misreading the lines. It seems to me that Yeats liked the material but recognized the inherent
contradictions (and absurdities). A better idea struck him. He didn’t spell it out in the drafts because
he didn’t have to. That’s not what drafts are for. He used/reused the imagery of the mummy and the
winding cloth to suggest a much cleverer association. What is a bobbin? A bobbin is like a spindle.
And what did ancient Egyptians wrap around spindles? Papyrus and linen. And what did we end up
with? Scrolls. And what might ancient Egyptians have been writing on a scroll? — that Yeats’ might
have been very interested in?
“The Book of the Dead was most commonly written in hieroglyphic or hieratic script on a papyrus
scroll, and often illustrated with vignettes depicting the deceased and their journey into the
afterlife.” [Wikipedia, September 25th)
732px-Weighing_of_the_heart3“The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used

from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BCE) to around 50 BCE.[1] The original
Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw[2] is translated as “Book of Coming Forth
by Day”.[3] Another translation would be “Book of emerging forth into the Light”. Though, book is
the closest term to describe the loose collection of texts[4] consisting of a number of magic spells
intended to assist a dead person’s journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife
and written by many priests over a period of about 1000 years.” [Ibid.]
Viola!
For [because] Hades’ bobbin [The Book of the Dead] bound in mummy-cloth [a scroll’s linen
wrapping or book]
May unwind [like a scroll] the winding path [by summoning or by the knowledge contained therein]];
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath [the written word]
Breathless mouths [the man that is shade, more image than shade] may summon
I hail [summon] the superhuman [the man or shade];

This, readers, in my opinion, is Hades Bobbin. Hades Bobbin is not a mummy. “Hades Bobbin” is The
Book of the Dead. Hades Bobbin is a scroll. There is no mummy in Byzantium. Yeats came up with a
much better idea and recycled/re-imagined the imagery of the drafts. Hades Bobbin, the scroll,
literally and figuratively unwinds the winding path. Thousands of years later, what did this scroll
become? A book. It was “bound”, possibly like the scroll itself, in mummy-cloth — the linen that
covers the hard-cover of a book. Yeats uses the very word — bound — to describe it. So, am I
suggesting that every other critic and close reader might have missed the farm (maybe even got it
wrong)?
Yes.
It’s also worth noting that scrolls were sometimes “bound” or wrapped in linen. Was this something
Yeats would have known when writing Byzantium? I don’t know.
C heck out this website, where you will find this:
“Robert Moss’s ambition to give us a Western Book of the Dead has been fully realized in this
captivating and inspiring guide to the land of the dead. Moss shocks and thrills by revealing the
hidden truth — that the other world is in fact the famliar landscape of our dreams, where we go
every night. There we can, if we intend it, meet up with our lost loved ones and encounter the great
mentors of the past. His own mentor is the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats with whom he has involved
and meaningful conversations. Moss reminds us that by our night dreaming and waking dreams we
prepare for the great journey of the world beyond the mists the Celts called the Blessed Isles. Our
dreams are the measure of what we aspire for, and it is in this life, through practicing our
imagination, that we can draw our roadmap and our destination. For a better death and life beyond
death — but also for a better life in the world of the living — do not miss this classic from a true
Western Master.”
And now, the next lines make perfect sense:
What is a mouth that has no moisture and no breath? A scroll or a book — perhaps even a poem.
With Hades Bobbin — the scroll or The Book of the Dead — Yeats is able to “hail”, summon, the
superhuman — the man, the shade, the image — his guide. Readers and critics have always assumed
that it was the “mummy”, the “shade” or the “guide” who was summoning Yeats, but this makes no
sense. Yeats, or the speaker of the poem, is not a breathless mouth. As far as we know, he’s still
alive. Furthermore, Yeats never actually writes that he (or the speaker of the poem) was summoned.
That’s simply how readers have chosen to interpret the lines. (And if he was summoned, then it was
the cathedral’s gong that summoned him.) If interpreted correctly (in my opinion) its the breathless
mouth of a book, The Book of the Dead, that has summoned the breathless mouth of a guide or
shade. Yeats calls this guide: death-in-life and life-in-death. Be cognizant, also, that The Book of the
Dead is filled with spells, incantations and chants that probably appealed to Yeats’ imagination for
their nearness to poetry. If my interpretation is correct then, in a sense, Yeats is all but stating that
it’s poetry that summons the superhuman.
superhuman/ death-in-life and life-in-death This terminology has been subjected to hundreds of
pages of scrutiny. I think most readers will instinctively grasp their meaning within the context of the
poem (though possibly not, precisely, what Yeats had in mind). If you’re interested to know what
exactly Yeats might have meant (and that means having a familiarity with A Vision and Yeats’s
esoteric writing) then resources are available. I say might because nobody knows for sure. To me,
the summoning of the superhuman is analogous to the summoning of a poem or a great work of
literature. An interpretation near to my own, by Richard Ellman, remains my favorite:
“Gradually the master-image of Byzantium must have assumed dominance of the scene. The
completed poem has often been taken as a representation of the afterlife, and Yeats wished this
interpretation to be possible; but to him, it seems safe to say, ‘Byzantium’ was primarily a
description of the act of making a poem. The poet, who is imprecisely identified with the Byzantine
emperor, takes the welter of images and masters them in an act of creation. This mastery is so
astonishing to the poet himself that he calls the creation of his imagination superhuman. The image
of the golden bird, ‘more miracle than bird or handiwork,’ may be understood to represent a poem;
the bird sings, as do Yeats’s poems, either like the cocks of Hades of rebirth — the continuing cycle
of reincarnating human life, or with greater glory of the eternal reality or beatitude which
transcends the cycles ‘and all complexities of mire or blood.’ Never had he realized so completely
the awesome drama of the creative act” (Richard Ellman. Yeats: The Man and the Masks 269).
So, in the first Stanza Yeats has arrived in Byzantium, and in the second stanza, as I read it, Yeats
uses Hades Bobbin, the “bound” Book of the Dead, to summon a guide.
The Third Stanza

The guide, presumably, has taken Yeats to see the miracle bird — the “artificial bird [that sings] upon
a tree of gold in the presence of the emperor”. Many critics assume that the guide is meant to take
“Yeats” to the afterlife. Not so, in my opinion. Why would such a guide be merry (or be a Mummy)? I
think it more likely that the guide is pleased because he has been summoned to take the poem’s
narrator to something of profound beauty and elegance. Interpreting the poem this way clears up
another conundrum that has troubled readers since the poem’s publication: Why does the narrator
need two guides — the mummy and a miracle bird? The answer is that the conundrum arises from
misinterpretation — neither the guide nor the bird are meant to guide the narrator into the afterlife.
The third stanza, in the middle and heart of the poem, brings us back to the comment that
apparently prompted Yeats to write Byzantium: “…a goldsmith’s bird is as much nature as a man’s
body, especially if it only sings like Homer and Shakespeare of what is past or to come to Lords and
Ladies.”
The first thing Yeats tries to clarify is that the bird isn’t just a “goldsmith’s bird”, but a miracle — a
bird imbued with not just mechanical wonder but something akin to life and intelligence. In
analyzing Sailing to Byzantium, I wrote:
If Yeats is referring to his art, his poetic passion, then the imagery is easier to swallow. Remember
too, Yeats’ comment concerning the skills of Byzantine goldsmiths. Yeats glowingly comments that
they can create “a lovely flexible presence like that of a perfect human body”. Yeats, himself, doesn’t
think of the goldsmith’s work as mechanical and lifeless, no, just the opposite. The artifice is not
mechanical but “flexible”, not lifeless, but like the “perfect human body”. Yeats is describing a
spiritual/alchemical transmutation like a kind of miracle. (…) Yeats, in my opinion, is describing a
personal, spiritual transformation as manifested through his art – his poetry. He is, in a sense,
identifying himself as his poetry – which is all that will remain after he has died. In this guise, the
gold bough is like the magnum opus of his poetry (his Collected Poems).
The miracle, perhaps, is in the bird’s (Yeats’s poetry) being able to continue speaking, intelligently
voicing his dreams and visions. In this sense, and in keeping with Yeats’s own spiritual ideas, the
guide is showing him both his future and his past. The bird speaks to the purged soul of all men and
women — hence the miracle. The bird, embodying Yeats’ poetry, speaks to the undying truth of our
natures. Admittedly, resting so much symbolism in a mechanical bird will probably strike readers as
eccentric, and it is.
“It is hard to say just what “exposition” Yeats had given to the idea of the bird by writing the poem;
perhaps he would answer that his treatment had brought out more of the inherent beauty of the
“image,” and that anything so beautiful must adumbrate the truth .He was quite capable of teasing
his correspondent with a mystery, in a grand manner, and it seems plain that could have chosen a
more impressive example of the good which may be done by exalted works of art, if that was all he
had required.” [Ibid. p. 81]
cage2705b_261x174q85
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Note: Interestingly, Empson goes on to discuss what may have inspired Yeats’ golden bird. He
remarks that mechanical, singing birds were, in fact, available and for sale during Yeats’ childhood
and that his own (Empson’s) great-Aunt used to bring out “exquisitely preserved toys of an antiquity
rivaling her own. Chief among them was the bird of Yeats in its great cage, wound up to sing by a
massive key; a darkish green tree, as I remember, occupied most of the cage, and a quite small
shimmering bird, whose beak would open and shut while the musical box in the basement was
playing, perched carelessly on a branch on one side.” [Ibid. p. 83] Empson didn’t recall seeing a
golden bough, but that’s surely Yeats’s imagination at work. [The image, above, is of an actual
Victorian Mechanical bird with a music box. I couldn’t find a larger version of this image. It sold for
$795 dollars. The attached audio file is of the singing bird — the very one pictured in the image.]
Nevertheless, Yeats tries to drive home the argument that this isn’t any ordinary bird or work of art.
In can crow like the cocks of Hades and in “changeless metal [can scorn]/ Common bird or petal/And
all complexities of mire or blood.” In other words, the mechanical bird is self aware; is alive,
intelligent and changeless. When it is “embittered” by the changeless beauty of the moon,
surpassing any transient work of man, it can add scorn to its song — something no, mere,
mechanical bird can do.
hadesAnd what of the “cocks of hades” and their crowing? This may be a reference to iconography
of Hades, which is often accompanied by a sheaf of wheat and/or the rooster/the cock (both of
which were traditional sacrifices to Hades). What Yeats has in mind by this comparison isn’t clear to
me. Possibly Yeats intends us to think that the cocks of Hades, having all been sacrifices, would
(when crowing) possibly give voice to the desires of those who sacrificed them (presumably, the
sacrifice was meant to appease and possibly to win favor or win “a favor”). In that sense, the golden
bird on the bough, when crowing like the cocks of hell, would give voice to your innermost hopes
and desires. The mechanical bird would speak your own truth (or hidden truths) back to you.
·
So, if we continue to follow Yeats’ narrative, it’s possible to read Yeat’s progress like that of Virgil’s.
Yeats has been brought by his shade/image guide to the miracle bird which speaks to him of his
innermost hopes, desires and truths.
Hades is also a god of fertility and wealth, including precious metals. Being that the miracle bird is
beaten out of precious metal, this too effectively makes it Hades’ cock.
The Fourth Stanza
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
After the shade has shown the poem’s narrator the miracle bird, and once the narrator is
presumably filled with that bird’s revelation (like the revelation of poetry) he is taken to the
Emperor’s pavement where he himself is purged or, more certainly, he watches the “images” of
others be purged. Why so hedging? The narrator/narration never states that the narrator was
purged. Since one assumes that purging is reserved for the dead or dying, and since the poem never
actually states that the narrator is dead, we can’t assume too much. The narrator might, like Virgil,
just be visiting and witnessing. In this sense, the poem is more like Dante’s inferno — a Yeatsian
version of it.
Vendler characterizes the narrator as “the mortally ill poet” [p, 44], but there’s nothing in either
Sailing to Byzantium or Byzantium to suggest that she’s right, which is to say, her opinion doesn’t
reflect anything intrinsic to the poems. I do read a narrator who is turning away from the trimmings
and frolic of youth, but that hardly makes me leap to the conclusion that he’s mortally ill. I mean, for
God’s sake, we can be fed up with the pastimes of youth — bodily, mentally and spiritually —
without being mortally ill. In fact, putting such habits behind us usually tends to make us much
healthier. I read Yeats as remaking himself. His journey to Byzantium is akin to an awakening — a
spiritual journey that could be compared to the visions of the American Indians. He is en-souled.
It’s easy, I suppose to speculate on the deeper metaphysical implications of every line (you can read
Vendler for this) but I think most readers will instinctively grasp the meaning of the fourth stanza.
These aren’t actual flames, these are spiritual flames (the kind that “cannot singe sleeve”). The
agony is not the agony of being burned alive, but the agony of purification, spiritual awakening
(perhaps), of a new awareness, knowledge and attainment. These spiritual flames will purge the
“blood-begotten spirits” of the complexities which are the ensnarement of blood and mire — lust,
physical sexuality and life’s begetting of life. As mentioned earlier, what’s left behind after this
purging isn’t exactly clear, but we know what it’s not. My interpretation? I think the Emperor’s
pavement is like the page on which poetry is written — perhaps Yeats’ poetry. The flames “that no
faggot feeds” are the flames of knowledge. Just as flames are “begotten of flame”, so too is
knowledge begotten of knowledge. The inevitable turning from youthful pleasure to knowledge and
wisdom is inevitably a kind of agony. In keeping with my reading of Sailing to Byzantium, I’m
tempted to read this passage as symbolically describing our awakening to art, poetry, music and the
timeless wisdom therein.
The Fifth Stanza
Fresh images beget,
Whether the narrator turns, or his attention is turned by the guide, is left to the imagination. Yeats
doesn’t say. Given my own interpretation of the second stanza, I like to think that the man, “shade
more than man, more image than a shade” is still with Yeats and has turned his attention to the
gong-tormented sea. There, the narrator sees spirit after spirit arriving in Byzantium. It’s my own
opinion that these can be interpreted both literally and figuratively — as the recently dead or as the
recently awakened. John Unterecker, in A Reader’s Guide to W.B. Yeats, writes:
“All spirits, in Yeats’s system, are of course purified before being reborn; but in “Byzantium” Yeats is
offering the final purification by which the elemental patterns of the dancing floor “break” the cycle
of birth and rebirth, the bitter compulsive necessity of the spirits to live their lives over and over,
begetting image after image.” [p.219]
There you have the official, informed by Yeats’s Vision, interpretation of this stanza. Again, there’s
no mention of what exactly, remains once all this has happened? — which is why I find this kind of
explanation so unsatisfactory. What is left of us? What is left of the spirit? What are we once we’ve
broken the cycle of birth and rebirth? The only hint that I’ve found so far is in the draft quoted by
Empson:
but now I will take off my body
That they might be enfolded in that for which they had longed
I live on love
That which is myself alone…
Being the remnants of a draft, we can only guess at Yeats’s meaning, but perhaps we can be forgiven
for thinking that just a little of that complexity, love, remains, just a little of that sensuality and
yearning for pleasure. It’s this that makes me think we probably shouldn’t too closely apply Yeats’s
Vision to any interpretation of the poem. That is, I think it’s a mistake to read either of the
Byzantium poems as a footnote to the Vision. Though I can’t back up my assertion (and may well be
wrong) I’m of the mind that Yeats the poet didn’t always jibe with Yeats the spiritualist. He was
obviously a man of conflicting emotions and desires. In his own poetry, arguably the poetry of the
Vision, we find a poetry of sensual beauty, words that physically delight in their melody and
repetition, and a powerful intellectual complexity. Personally, this is what I really think Yeats
imagines as the outcome of the purgatorial dance. It’s a youthful desire for beauty, drama, and
sensuality that is transformed by age and knowledge into a more awe-inspiring and en-souling
beauty, drama and sensuality.
But that’s just me.
The golden smithies of the emperor — figuratively the poets, artists and musicians — await us at the
shores of Byzantium, that crazy city of both decadence and enlightenment, ready to transform us,
ready to “break the flood” of our arrival.
One of the questions lovingly discussed by close readers is this: What’s with the dolphins? If nothing
else, the imagery is striking and dramatic, also beautiful. Vendler remarks that the dolphins are
“symbols of resurrection on Roman sarcophagi” and I’m perfectly content to leave it at that. Makes
sense to me.
The Marbles of the dancing floor, for some reason (and without reason) I’ve always imagined as
being black and white. And this has always lead me to think that Yeats is alluding to the black and
white appearance of words on the page; and this brings me back to my assertion that the
“Emperor’s pavement” might be thought of as the page on which poems are printed. In other words,
the “blood-begotten spirits” (you and me) dance on the poet’s page (the Emperor’s pavement)
where the black & white marbles (the black and white words on the page) “break bitter furies of
complexity” (our confusion). We die in a dance (the act of reading), in a trance (the act of reflection),
in the agony of flame (the poet’s imparted knowledge) that “cannot singe a sleeve”. See? This is
purely interpretative and I make no claim that this was Yeats’ intention (though I know he would
have enjoyed it). Take it or leave it.
I say I know that Yeats would have enjoyed it because, in correspondence, he stated that he resisted
interpreting his own poems lest others be constrained.
1-sarcophagus-dolphins-rome-335x263
The poem’s final line: “That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea” is among the most resonant in
all poetry. Why is the sea “gong-tormented”? Other close readers have argued, and I’m inclined to
agree, that the entirety of the poem takes place during the twelve peals of midnight. The “torment”
is possibly a reference to the meaning of the peals. The great cathedral gong is a never-ending call
and summoning. (It’s the cathedral gong that summons, not any mummy or miracle bird.) The
cathedral gong, perhaps, can be understood as the voluble voice of Yeats’ vision, calling us to share
in the awakening of his poetry. And it’s in this sense that my current interpretation, builds on my
interpretation of Sailing to Byzantium.

Bexyntium

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Analysis of the Poem "Byzantium"

W.B.Yeats and Byzantium

What Are The Themes of Byzantium?

 Battle Between Immortality and The Creative Process

The Use of Symbolism in Byzantium

from The Symbolism of Poetry (W.B.Yeats) The Dome magazine, 1900

 Represents perfection, a vault of heaven, divine cosmic order.

The Golden Bird

 Resurrection, as Guides to Enlightenment, Selfless Guardians of the Unconscious.

 Soul, Memory, Love, The Unconscious, Universal Unformed Mind.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,

Critical Analysis of Byzantium Stanza by Stanza

Wound in mind's wandering

Critical Analysis of Byzantium Stanza by Stanza

Further Analysis of Byzantium Stanza by Stanza

Rhyme Scheme in Byzantium

Complete Metrical Analysis of Byzantium

Before / me floats / an i / mage, man / or shade,

At mid / night on / the Emp / eror's pave / ment flit

Themes, Motifs and Symbols

THEMES, MOTIFS AND SYMBOLS

The Relationship Between Art and Politics

The Impact of Fate and the Divine on History

The Transition from Romanticism to Modernism

Irish Nationalism and Politics

Mysticism and the Occult

Irish Myth and Folklore

The Great Beast

Byzantium by William Butler Yeats: Summary and Poem

William B. Yeats (1865-1939)

William B. Yeats (1865-1939)

The unpurged images of day recede;

The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;

Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song

After great cathedral gong;

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains

All that man is,

All mere complexities,

The fury and the mire of human veins.

Shade more than man, more image than a shade;

For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth

May unwind the winding path;

A mouth that has no moisture and no breath

Breathless mouths may summon;

I hail the superhuman;

I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Summary of Stanza III

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,

More miracle than bird or handiwork,

Planted on the star-lit golden bough,

Can like the cocks of Hades crow,

Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud

In glory of changeless metal

Common bird or petal

And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit

Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,

Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,

Where blood-begotten spirits come