Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats

The poem “Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?” by William Butler Yeats is a poem that brings insight into Yeats is life and his perception of life. In this poem, Yeats transmits to the reader how life can be unpredictable. This poem portrays the true reality of life, which is bitter and harsh. Yeats is focus in this poem is turned towards life and he uses many people close to him in this poem to demonstrate examples of how life can be a game of fate. Yeats in this poem tries to explain how nothing can be sure about life.

The timeless essence and the ambivalence in Yeats’ poems urge the reader’s response to relevant themes in society today. This enduring power of Yeats’ poetry, influenced by the Mystic and pagan influences is embedded within the textual integrity drawn from poetic techniques and structure when discussing relevant contextual concerns.

“When You Are Old” is about the love of a man for a woman whom he had on a pedestal. He felt this woman was loved by many with a true and deep love and loved by others with a false love. He felt this woman was loved much like people today love celebrities. Yeats wrote about this woman as though he knew her intimately. He asks her to “slowly read, and dream of the soft look, Your eyes had once and of their shadows deep” (Yeats). He wants her to remember how things were in her youth. He wants her to remember her dreams and think of how things were and how they may have been. Yeats is asking her to take her time and day dream about her glory days.

In the first stanza Yeats expresses his conflicting loathing and admiration for modernity through the juxtaposition of “vivid faces” and “grey houses”. This represents the possibilities that modernity can bring; the revitalising of the community or the destruction of tradition and age old energy already lost by the modifications in the city. The repetition of the phrase “A terrible beauty is born” in the first and fourth stanzas articulate this inner turmoil revolving around modernity. This oxymoronic declaration is emphasised throughout the text by Yeats’ confusion towards the rebellion and its necessity. The fourth stanza embodies this conflict, removing the previously represented idea that life in pre-rebellion Ireland was a “casual comedy”, alluding to an Elizabethan play where the characters were content. By asking the rhetoric questions “was it needless death” and “O when may [British rule] suffice?” Yeats parallels the unresolved contradiction of “terrible beauty”. However, this sensitive treatment of conflict allows the retainment of ambiguity and can be related to any change within life, hence allowing audiences to superimpose their own beliefs and ideas into the poem. Yeats continues to explore his aversion towards modernism in The Second Coming with the appointment of a new “gyre” standing as the symbol for a new age. The fear of

company. From Sailing to Byzantium by Mr. Yeats, the quote “Consume my heart away; sick with desire” seems to fit most

During the time in which Yeats was writing the poem, the world was in the midst of events like the First World War, Russian Revolution and political strife in his own country, Ireland. The first stanza in the poem represents this as Yeats captures and encourages the image of political unrest and confusion. It talks about the fall of family values, social structure, and religious disbelief. This is also represented in “September 1913,” another of Yeats poems, as he presents the changed in Irelands national identity. This first stanza also implies that the old rules no longer matter anymore and instead of rules there was confusion and chaos. The first too lines specifically is a metaphor that the world is spiralling out of control. The relationship

Through the use of vigorous, ritualistic imagery and war-like diction, Yeats accentuates the inauspicious course of events the world has faced. Yeats, in the first stanza, uses violent and warlike imagery and diction to illustrates that the world is on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation. Yeats describes that the world is going to “fall apart,” and that “mere anarchy is [loosened] upon the world,” and ‘everywhere...innocence is drowned.” The use of violent diction in the first stanza contributes to the concept that world is going to end, and that humanity cannot recover from the destruction the world has caused, but Yeats uses ritualistic imagery to describe “a rough beast” with “a shape [of a] lion body and head of a man” to show that this “New Age” will bring some hope. William Yeats uses this violent and ritualistic imagery and diction to illustrate that in order to bring a new era, the old epoch must die violently, which is his concept of “the second coming.” Yeats believes that a violent revolution will bring hope to a new era. Similarly, how the Russian Revolution was destructive and brought an end to an era and started a new age which bought Russia to new heights, Yeats believes that a violent end of the world can bring the new world to new

Similarly, the poem ‘When You Are Old’ by William Butler Yeats is of women being told what it will be like when she becomes older. However, in this poem when she becomes older she will regret passing on a young man’s love instead of become the older women filled with joy of being an older and without cares the person in ‘Afternoon’. Both poems are of younger people looking into the future of when they become older but the results are much

John Keats’ poem, When I have fears that I may cease to be, is a well-known work that embodies many Romantic principles. The poem, explored in the context of Keats’ suffering from consumption, laments human impermanence while simultaneously exploring philosophical notions. Keats implements the use of the Shakespearean sonnet with each quatrain, beginning with the ambiguous, but time-bound word ‘when,’ manifesting these ideas in unique ways. When I have fears that I may cease to be uses the structure of the sonnet to delineate between the realms of reality and fantasy, while contributing to the overarching concept of eternity and ultimately reaches the conclusion that even lofty ideas that appear eternal ultimately erode.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature, was both born and educated in Dublin Ireland; he was awarded the Noble Prize for literature in 1933. One of his most famous poems, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” was written early in his career as a poet. In the poem, Yeats takes the reader to a small island away from the chaos of everyday life, an island where the poet imagines he will go to live independently. The reader is transported, with the poet, to a place far away from schedules, deadlines, and stress. Yeats uses alliteration, end rhymes, and other poetic strategies to transport the reader to his imaginary getaway: the Isle of Innisfree.

The sages represent the father-like figure that hold to power to life, which the aging man requests from sages. As Simon O. Lesser, author of “Sailing to Byzantium”-Another Voyage, Another Reading, states, “In this poem, it appears to be widely believed, Yeats triumphantly confronts and liquidates his fears of aging and death…. [H]e discovers that engrossment in poetry is the only, but a sufficient, recompense for the privatizations of old age” (291), which Yeats’ reasoning for writing this poem: to spread the message that anyone can live forever through their art. While the narrator in the poem never officially possess a proper name, the poet Yeats writes this poem to express his lack of fear for death after discovering that his memory continues to live through all his poems. William Butler Yeats knows that he lives forever through all those who continue to read and understand his poems, because his works lives on in others. While Yeats never explicitly states this, the idea that poems keep the poet alive forever derives from philosophical thought and reasoning, similar to the aging man that visits the mosaic painting. Similar to the aging man in the poem, Yeats searches for the sage-like figures that provide the answer to death that

Yeats showed a lot of dark diction through this poem. The author states “Things fall apart the center cannot hold. “ This predicted that a new war is coming and is foreshadowing society’s destruction. His choice of words gave the whole poem a dark tone, for example nightmare and blood. These words are pointing out how regretful and damaging the second coming will become.

As the reader looks deeper into the poem he/she might find alternate meanings behind the luring of the child. Yeats was a nationalist during a time of great political upheaval in Ireland. Nationalists wanted Ireland return to years before when Ireland was considered one nation. The Celtic images of the past could represent a desire to return to a time where Ireland was united. The freedom that the faery world allows is representative of the freedom that unity throughout Ireland allowed before religion and politics became large issues.

In Yeats’ poem Sailing to Byzantium the narrator leaves his home country of Dodge on a sailing journey to the country Byzantium, which is near by in proximity to his home country but very different in its societal beliefs and norms because it is considered a holy city. The narrator describes Dodge as a place where the young and beautiful can strive and live happily, but once that beauty begins to fade with age it turns into a very different place. His discontent with the country and people who represent these shallow views is apparent from different lines of dialogue from the narrator and he heads to Byzantium to find more meaning and happiness in life. The narrator decides that Dodge is a place for shallow people because they embrace only the newest trends and whatever is pretty or aesthetically pleasing. The people of Dodge have

The fifth stanza describes the quality that Yeats came to see as at the very heart of civilized life: courtesy. By courtesy he understands a means of being in the world that would protect the best of human dignity, art and emotion. And in his prayer for his daughter he wishes that she will learn to survive with grace and dignity in a world turned horrific. He explains that many men have hopelessly loved beautiful women, and they thought that the women loved them as well but they did not.