Sailing To Byzantium by W. B. Yeats (Poem & Summary)

 

Sailing To Byzantium

by W. B. Yeats

(Poem & Summary) 

Sailing to Byzantium

I

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees,

—Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

 

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

 

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

 

IV

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.

Summary

Life is a journey of the Soul through three countries— childhood, youth and old age. The poet has journeyed through the first two. Looking back, he tells himself that the country of youth is meant only for the young, not for the old. It is because youth is a period of procreative activities. Young men and women are in one another’s arms. Young birds in trees burst into song and mate. Salmon fish transcend rivers to copulate and spawn. But river waters bring them back to the estuary where they fall into the sea again, and copulate there. Sea-coasts are full of mating mackerel fish. Thus fish, animals. and birds, or rather all mortal creatures, spend their youth in sensual life. Music of the senses keeps the young charmed with sensual pleasures, pains, etc. So, the young do not pay any attention to the grandeur of the Soul.

An old man’s life is worthless. He is like a tattered coat upon a stick, if he does not arouse his Soul from the sleep of worldly life. His Soul must expiate for every sin he has committed by means of his bodily senses. His soul can destroy its sins by realizing its own

magnificent nature. So, the poet has crossed the seas of worldly attachments, desires. etc. And he has now arrived at the outskirts of the holy city of the Soul, called Byzantium. [He means that he has given up the world, and is trying to become a Yogi.] Then seated in his yogic posture, he calls upon all the powers of his senses to return to his Soul, just as a hawk comes back to its master. He also prays to them to be the guides of his Soul to self-realization. He then urges them to burn up all the worldly ills of his Soul. For it is sick with the disease of desires, and does not know its real, divine nature, being shut up in his mortal body. Finally, he prays to those powers to help his Soul attain the state and consciousness of being eternal, in the Samadhi.

Once his Soul has risen from the bondage of’ body-mind Nature, in his Samadhi, he shall not bring it back to the subjection of his body and mind. On the contrary, he shall continue sitting in his Samadhi, as if he were a gold statue made and painted by Greek goldsmiths. He shall do so to keep awake his Soul which may still be a bit drowsy with worldly sleep. Further, he shall set it on the highest bough of the golden tree of the Samadhi, to look attentively at the Samskaras of its past lives, of its present one, and also at their results in the future. Those Samskaras are to be shown by his Indriyas, the Manas, and the Buddhi, at its command.