THE TOWER

Introduction
The Tower, published in 1928, 1s probably Yeats' most important single
volume. Certainly it contains many of his most famous, most widely read,
anthologized, quoted, studied and explicated poems, major works like "Sail
ing to Byzantium, "Leda and the Swan," "The Tower'" and *Among
School Children." Indeed, as one leafs through this section in the Collected
the consistently high the brilliant level of
Poems, one is struck by
-

of
achievement that the poet was able to maintain throughout. Yeats, course,
was as skillful and
careful a craftsman as there has been in this century, but
even he, especially
in earlier volumes, had off moments. Yet in The Tower it
is succeeded by one as great or greater, as though
seems as though each poem
talisman
Yeats had found a kind of philosopher's stone of poetry, magic
a

which enabled him to transmute whatever dross he happened upon into the
purest literary gold.
at least
The role of magic talisman was, as we have noted before, played and
that wasA Vision. "Leda
in part by the system of metaphors and symbols
written deliberately to illustrate Book V of
that
the Swan," for instance, was
out of which the poet might gradually
work, as a kind of texte d'explication to Byzantium," too,
develop his theory of history. "Sailing
"annunciation"
"Leda"" or its
on A Vision, ough much less centrally than either
depends *"All Souls' Night," of course,
was
later companion-piece, "Byzantium."" it
as an Epilogue to A
Vision, and so it involves, though
originally intended
truths" of the book. And "Two Songs
does not enunciate, the "mummy on which"Ledaand
the
elaborates further the historical pattern
From a Play'"
Swan is based. are not
and they are many which
-

Tower
what of the poems in The
-

But talisman, what philosopher's

stone
to A Vision? What magic "Nineteen Hundred and
directly related Civil War,
makes
t h e m - " M e d i t a t i o n s in of
Time
such towering
School Children,
*"Among
Nineteen,"" *"The Tower," the first group of poems, the Vision
a n s w e r is that,
while
masterpieces? The what we have called
Yeats' speculative
poems, were produced primarily by directly from the
other
second group seems to stem more

imagination, this his confessional

brilliant sense of autobiography,
his (the secret
Side of his poetic genius, is a kind of inspired egotism
in other words, which
intensity. Their secret, - a meditative
self-absorption
romantic poems, afterall), of his daily life
his
-

of many great objects

the simplest
enabled the poet to trans mute
e ven Samurai
his paperweight (an old
house (a tower ), his garden
(full of roses), done this before,
order. He had certainly
SWord)- into symbols of
the highest who became
variously a symbol
Maud Gonne, such
with womanhood. But
most notably, of
course,
and of misguided
of"fallen majesty,"" until marriage
of beauty itself, poets, and it wasn't to
traditional among was able
use of the beloved is it did) that Yeats
a declared almost
knitted" him into life
(as he himself Thus between
the new,
experience.
See such gold in the dross of daily 57
 4 Vision gave to his
prophetic intensity thatnew
and the fidence with whichnetaphysica sywbols snd
speculations,
confront ordinary reality,
Yeats was able, inn Th
The marriag
poeticAachievement
he had never reached before Tower, to heleda him to
attain
third strain, however, is als0 present, indeed ev level of
poems, and this is the bitterness of Ireland's political
t o have united the first two strains we identified
ver-presentwhichin seethese
situation,
source of nspiration for the poet tecy and m
reality- into a third
him, in"Nineteen Hundred and Ninetcen and *"Meditoepolitics
in' Time oCa
War, with both a living, seemingIy bottomless well ofbitte provided
to take a gloomily prophetic standnesS and i i
right ground on which st the
after 7he Tower Was published Ycats wrote to Olivia Shakr deed, sormeti
amazed by the book's ""bitterness. And on the surface s espear that he
it did from a Nobel
surface such bitterness wa v

seem surprising, coming as

Prize winner, a docs
happy husband and father. Yet lo0oking further one sees that
enator, a
Senator
enough. To be a leading citizen (not yet a Senator) of a country as cause
hopelessly divided against itself, or of a tion that was being in 1919 inh 1922
and systematically oppressed byanother was surely cause for brutaly
more, to have
discovered some of simplest satisfactions ofbitterne ss.
life fort Even
the
time at the age of fifty was cause for bitterness, as well as, moreimporta f
opportunity to state his oldest theme - of aging, of passing timo an
fantastic new force and authority. with
At last knitted into life so that he could write about it more Dassiona.
and perceptively, Yeats must have brooded onthe irony of his having
this new reality Iife instead of dreams so late. Happily married and
father of two young children, he was already in his Sixties, an "old coat upona
stick to s c a r e the b i r d s , " a n d felt c a l l e d u p o n t o r e l i n q u i s h this new lifeit

just as
he had discovered its joys. "The abstract joy/The half-read wisdom
daemonic images'" must "suffice theaging man, as once the growingboy
he wrote. No wonder he was bitter! Yet his bitterness was magic too;itg
even more of a shine to his verses, as it if were still another aspect ofthe
wonderful stone that turned life's mud and bones to gold. Hisemotionalstue
at this time seems to have involved a curious, marvellous corjunction
fulfillment and dissatisfaction - one of those accidental combinations o
Circumstance and preparation which so often act upon genius to producethe
greatest art.

'Sailing to Byzantium"
This first poem of The Tower, probably Yeats' most sl famous
poem, superbly expresses in its careful oppositions of age and youtn,
SOn
dilemmas of the book and, inuecu
sOme of the keenest central
-

reality, ncem
of the poet's own longest-standing preoccupations. lts maln
course, is Yeats' oldest theme - the subject of The Wanderings oj
man's mortality
"The Wild Swans at Coole aging, passing time, man's mu poe
gether with "The Tower" and Among School Children,
58
 ather more autobiographical in tone) "Sailing to Byzantium,"" (more purely
imaginative and almost mythical in its style) forms a group of meditations on
age and its implications which is at the heart of The Tower, informing all the
rest of the book. Even those poems on completely different subjects have
some of the bitter intensity of the aging poet's soul.
Sailing to Byzantium" is quite a short poem, consisting of four rather
simply put together stanzas (abababce, all in roughly iambic pentameter). In
the first, the poet describes the natural world, where the young of all species-
birds, fish, people - are busy loving, reproducing and "commending'" the
flesh. Though these "generations" are "dying'" from the moment of their
birth, they do not notice it. "Caught" in the "sensual music"" of life, they
neglect/Monuments of unaging intellect" - works of art, religion or philos-

ophy, the products of man's non-physical imagination. But what place is there
among these young sensualists for an old man whose senses have already
begun to fail, his fesh to falter?
In stanza 2 Yeats describes the predicament of the old man more closely
An aged man is no more than a scarecrow, a 'tattered coat upon a stick,"
and
unless he rejects the flesh which has in any case become inadequate
-

concentrates on improving his soul, sending it to

school to learm to sing. For if,
music'" of nature, now we
in the first stanza, we learned about the "sensual
music which the soul can
will discover that there is a corresponding spiritual
for are not poems "monu
study the music of art, of poetry, for instance,
-

**And therefore,'" Yeats tells us,

ments of [the soul's] own magnificence?"
and come,/To the holy city of
he has sailed the seas [figuratively, ofcourse]
Byzantium," a kind of capitol of
art.
which are
Many critics have commented on the Byzantium poems,
number of them have concen-
famous works, and a good
among Yeats' most
of "the holy city of Byzantium to
trated on analyzing the special significance
Tower, suggests that Byzantium "has a
the poet. T.R. Henn, in The Lonely
value." First, "it stands for the unity of all
aspects of life,
multiple symbolic in AVision,
the last time in history."As Yeats himself wrote,
forperhaps and leave it to
ifI could be given a month of Antiquity
"It think
a little before
it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium
spend closed the Academy of Plato.
I
Justinian opened St. Sophia and
little wine-shop some philosophical
think I could find in some the super
answer all my questions,
Worker n mosaic who could the pride
than to Plotinus even, for
natural descending nearer to him of power to
what was an instrument
of his delicate skill would make show as a
madness in the mob,
and clerics, a murderous
princes human body. I think
flexible presence like that of a perfect
lovely recorded history,
maybe never before or since in
that in Byzantium, architect and
and practical life were one, that
religious, aesthetic,
the few alike.
artificers. .. spoke to the multitude and to Henn,
Byzantium, according
In addition to this unity of imagination,
the mysteries of the
. contains in itself. .
.

be
Decause it is in the past. .

59
dead." And R. P. Blackmur has proposed a similar
Yeats," he says, "the heaven of the man' view:
in eternal or miraculous forms; there all
mind; there the mi"Byza
are
things are
known to the soul. [it) represents both possible ot soul dwe
state of insight. Lastly, Henn remarks
a dated.
that there
is, and aall th
for "might
epochbecause
spondence between Ireland and Byzantium, t Byzantium
symbolize new Ireland breaking away from its à Yeats, tecure
a

develop its own masters Come

philosophical, religious, and artistic destinv
In stanza 3, the
poem' s passionate climax, Yeats addresces ithi
Byzantium, the "sages standing in God's holy fire/As
wall" (an obvious reference to
Byzantine art work).
in the spirits
He begs gold m od
from the holy fire" and
with desire/And fastened
spiral down ("perne ina gyre") to them to
to a where he
dying animal." He
away" heart, blinded with its fleshly, mortal wants them to
his
to be immortal
teach him the secrets of the
- dreams, and teach ConSum
eternity." soul and of art, of himb
the""ani
In stanza 4 Yeats
imagines what this
course, far from the traditional immortality
would be like.
concept of It i
This is the heaven of
art, where the artist immortality
-angels choiino
out of nature himself becomes the
now, and having
and for all, he rejected nature's sensual music of artifact. He
becomes a golden bird, stanza ICn
soul's music the
ladies of Byzantium." knowledge
of all the ages to
supernaturally
wise, who sings t
the -

As we have
mythical "lords an
already
ings for Yeats. Most noted, Byzantium
has a number of
of the itimportant,
represents "the artifice of different mea
imagination,
Vision), the point ofsituated, in its
greatest glory, ateternity," aland
the
veins are superseded by Full Moon, where phase 15
"the fury and the (in terms of A
walls with their miracle and by a mire of huma
little
a
supernatural
function as symbol of glimmering cubes of blue and spendour, thes
than its Ireland, though green and gold." Is
function
devoted to the study of
as
climax the perhaps
of a certain real, is
clearly less significant
kind of Christian
Wisdom. Thus, in Sailing *monuments of unaging society, a city
world, the world of to
Byzantium" intellect," and of "the
Holy
"sensual Yeats contrasts
world of the music,"
spirit. *"Whatever is with'*the holy city of the tempor
wishes to transcend begotten, Byzantium,"
the cycle of born, and dies," the
lect/Monuments of
identical, and
"those dying
unaging intellect. ought not, if 1
generations,"
lifeless artifacts, though it may seem thatimagination Art,
and
"neg to

flesh. The "birdsthey are, in

reality,
golden
more
birds and
mosaics eternity are
trees of stanza 1,intensely ensouled than simply
in the are
naturally and, at times, more though living
spiritual they may sing more
sense, than the
golden. bough to sing/To lords and artificialspontaneously,
birds of stanza
less
alive, in a
passing, or to come. ladies ot
4,
which are
"set upon a
profound.
longer"fastened to
The
"sages Byzantium/of
who dwell in
the what is past, of
a
dying animal, stand in God's world of the spirit.
60 holy no
fire/As in the gold
mosaic
de ofa wall," and
of a wall, purificd within that "supernatural
are

nint where
where their ow
theirown greatness, splendour"" to
the point the greatness
attain immortalits and a kind of omniscience.
of the soul, enables them to
Soveral critics have noted that in his Essays Yeats
ent a supernatural one beyond and above the four writes of a fifth
natural and tradi-
al clements, and calls it "a bird born out of the fire." (cf. Friar and
Bnnin, Modern Poetry) The soul, freed from flesh, becomes such a bird, an
aificial bird singing in the ecstatic flames of Byzantium, the "heaven of
man's imagination." *"Even the drilled pupil of the eye,*" Yeats
in A
Vision, when the drill is in the hand of some Byzantine worker says
"

in ivory,
undergoe s a somnambulistic change, for its deep shadow
ofthe tablet, its mechanical circle, where all else is among the faint lines
rhythmical and flowing, to
give to Saint or Angel a look of some great bird staring at miracle." And in
"Sailing to Byzantium" Yeats asserts that if Soul
sing. ." it rises from *a clap its hands and
.
tattered coat upon a stick" and becomes such a
Saint or Angel of the imagination, staring thus at miracle.

The Tower
and "childish memories.

Political Irish Easter

are political ones, originating in the
The next five poems and abortive rebellion was
1916. Among those killed in this tragic
rising of MacBride, and
*"loutish"-seeming husband, Major John
once
Maud Gonne's was Yeats' beautiful
childhood friend, Con
taken prisoneer
among those celebrated these new,
saintlike heroes and
1916" he
Markiewicz. In *"Easter whose lives had been heretofore
men and w o m e n
heroines of nationalism, like a stone in the midst
of the
fixed purpose,
ordinary, but whose grimly the midst all'") had brought to pass a "terrible
stream ("*the stone's
in of ot heroic
living and tragic gaiety
terrible beauty is born'") the beauty
-

and
beauty'" ('a tells more specifically about Irish events
sacrifice.Sixteen Dead Men"
men were
killed by the English
inspired: sixteen
the particular heroism they that as a kind
of logical
1916, and Yeats argues
ater the uprising of Easter
situation
have changed the political
deaths
of "Easter 1916*" their conciliation are
no longer
result acceptance,
Appeasement, passive
new
the r o s e in a
uterly. old symbol of
Markiewicz, a
possible."The Rose Tree uses Yeats is about Con
Political Prisoner Sligo, the
political context. "On a beautiful girl in
she was a mind "a"
Woman whom Yeats had known when had made her
political activity
poet's native county, before years of 53
bitter, an abstract thing." Thus the poem combines its political concern (Con
arkieWicz was imprisoned for her part in the 1916 uprising) withtheidea,
stated earlier in *Michael Robartes and the Dancer,"" that women should no
with unnatural
Ocstroy the natural spontaneous genius of their physicai beauty
mental exertions, especially exertions of a political nature.

The Second Coming"

 destroy the natural spontaneous genius ol their physical beautu h o
auty with hould ws
unnatu Atithetica
phe
pril

mental exertions, especially exetions of a political nature

Chrst'sp
The Second Coming" 04new

This, probably the most famous single poem in Michael Robar

tes andthe A Pra

Dancer, and one of the most widely read and anthologized

thologized
poems, unites the poet's political and mystical concerns in an all
of
Yea Anot

visionary artistic whole. In the first stanza the poet describes the nra Coming,
secondar
of the world its political upheavals, the chaos and
civilization, the haphazard brutality of contemporary culture.
cynicism Sent state
of
The firsg . Yeats

of the falcon (hunting hawk) losing touch with its keeper as it flies qut o4g Robartes

of his call or whistle, summarizes all this. The fixed point, the central kge Stanza

idea, around which our civilization (like a talcon) had revolved

(i.e., Ch beliefo pacesbe

tianity) has lost its power, it can no longer hold society in an orderly i s tcha

like a wheel around it (a structure which Yeats depicts as a series structh ucture paysica
of gvres pby
putward-spiralling circles). Instead, things are flying away, falling apartres, o
civilization is disintegrating. Our
In the second stanza the poet declares that all this
chaos, confusion and
disintegration must surely be a sign that a revelation, aSecond Coming" of
the Messiah is at hand. And even as he
says this, he experiences the extraord
nary vision which is the poem's climax. He sees a vast
image out of Spiritus hape
Maundi' (the world-spirit, or what the psychoanalyst Carl Jung would call
shape
the racial unconscious), a grant
sphinx-like creature, ""a shape with lion-body and of th
the head of a nan,"" moving
inexorably across the desert. Having had sucha
vision, Yeats has had, as he guessed he would,
a revelation "that twenty
thos
centuries of stony sleep/Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle" Like
is, that the two-thousand
years-sleep of pre-Christian man was roused tha
-

sta
troubled by the first coming, the and ma
wonder now, coming of Christ. This moves the to
poet
two thousand years later, as he waits for
the second
such an earth-shaking new
spirit, "what rough beast, its hour comecoming of
last/Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? round at
More than most of
Yeats post-Vision poems this one
theories the ghostly instructors brought the poet their depends on the
Specifically it depends on Yeats cyclical theory of metaphors for poetry.
-

history moves in vast two thousand year history, his idea that
cycles,
civilization and each one ushered in by a dramatic each cycle representing a
of some kind: a revelation symbolized by an religio-mystical revelation
annunciation
tion) and birth, such as the
annunciation of Mary and birth(mystical
of
concep
ushered in the Christian era of
0-2000 A.D.)and, earlier, the
Christ (which
Leda and birth of Helen (which ushered in the annunciation of
2000-0 B.C.) Thus the Second Coming here classical,
is not Graeco-Roman era of of

Christ himself, but of a realy a second comine of

new figure -
in
this case cruel, bestial, pitiless- who
will represent the new era as Christ symbolized the old.
Yeats w S
Sure that the
54
 century,
ofwhich he had
of whi seen the calamitous beginning-
World
rieth c o n t i n e n t , and at
Hentiet home the "troubles" -would make the end of
ParIon the
iective Christian civilization, and the beginning of a new
hetical, s u b j e c t i v ecivilization. Thus a new, rough beast is
the primary,

going to take
place in
the cradlee at Bethlehem, where it will **vex'" man's old
Christ's
nightmare.
sleep
new
to a
Praver For My Daughter
 (Albnght,. 6 28-29)

30. Sailing
Thispocmto waswritten
Byzantiumin the autumn(August-Seplcmbcr)of 1926 an
was
(1927). Thefirstdralt
ofthepocm w
October Blast thelinal shapc. Thetittle
il wasfirst publishcdin was given
times beforc it
editcd by thepoet several of Byzantiu,an ancient cin
from the name ofthe city
ofthepoem derives (?287-337). From A.D 1
Roman Emperor
Constantine
that wasbuilt by the Eastern or Greck empire andalso for
to 1453, it was the
headquarters ofthe
was believed to
be the place where Cod
the Eastern Christianity.
The city
first to Constantinople and then
changcd
existed. The name of the city
was

Jeffares writes:"Ycats's knowlcdgeof thecity was

toIstambul A. Norman
W.G. Holme's The Age of Justinian and
largely derived from reading
andAfter Iife: 1hree Lectures
Theodora (105), Mrs A. Strong.4potheosis
Religion in the Roman Empire (1915) and
on Certain 'hases ofArt and
(1911). He also ra
O.M. Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology
Aledievca
andFallofthe Roman npire, The(Cambridge
Gibbon's Decline work-
refcrence
History, the 'ncyclopaedia Britannica and other gencral
that J. B. Bury, the historian, who was Lal
R. Ellmann has suggested
niaster fora time at the High School, Dublin |where
Ycats read]. may
havc intercsted Yeats in Byzantium." (Jcllarcs,211-12).
Ycatsexpres=
Forty-OneSclected Pocms
Poems
209
Vision: think ifl couldbe givena month
"I
sfascinationinA

scinaend
histi

it where I chose, I would of Antiquity

ave spend it in
Byzantium, little a
1stinian opened
heforeJusti
St.
Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato."
."In November1924 Yeats had beenill, out
212).
(leffares,
pressure, and Mrs. Yeats
of breath, with
hieh
high
blood brought him to Sicily where he saw
mosaics of
Monreale and the
September, 1926 Yeats Wrote to Mrs. Capella
Byzantinen
the Palatina at Palermo...
Shakespear: There
ant interruptions-the
last time I wrote a poem about have been
rcOver my spirits."(Jetfares, 213). A Norman Jeffares Byzantium
aroduce the poem: "The best comment on further writes to
the poem,
contained in a paragraph Yeats wrote for a broadcast however, is
of his poems
Belfast,8 Sept. 1931) which was not included in the (BBC
script: 'Now l am trying to write about the final version of the
state of my soul, for it
for an old manto make his soul, and some of my is right
I have put intoapoem called' Sailing thoughts upon that
subject
illuminating the Books of Kells [in totheByzantium'. When Irishmen were
jewelled croziers in the National eighth century] and making the
European civilisation Museum
and the source of itsByzantium was the ceptre of
symbolise the search for the spiritual philosophy, so
spiritual
(Jeffares, 213). >ets im life by a
journey to that city."
To Yeats, Byzantium was a sort
the mythical of
character Oisin had paradise, a Tir na nóg, for which
the subject of been scarching all his life.
for,
many of Yeats's early poems. There in And search was
butyetunattained, paradise which was full of the poems, he
hoped
happiness-all. But the promises:
paradise, now represented by beauty, peace.
no
promise to the poet, and he is
therefore Byzantium, holds
Albright recounts the features of the frustrated However, Daniel
characteristics of Byzantium, then, Byzantium of this
poem: "The
dematerialization, if the city were the (1) an almost complete
as
are:
Kubla Khan' (1797),
in fact a draft of manufactured out ofpleasure
air and
dome in
Coleridge's
"Sailing to Byzantium' mentionedshadowed on water
dome.. Mirrored in water (..); 'St. Sophia's
between life and art-men are (2)adeliberate destruction ofthe sacred
the presence of a perfect translated into mosaic, while boundary
symbols
human body'"; (3) anonymity-art ishave
cooperative effect of a community of workers the
and beatitude of dead soyls were realized and
thinkers, the oblivion
there on
abstraction fronm life, anddByzanune art is notable for earth(Byzantium is an
(Albright, 629)) its abstract
character."
 One Solectod Pocm

To lords and ladies of Byzantium 211

Owhat is
past, or paSsing or to come
This p e m
af thirtytwo lines is divided
of tl
lines iúlo fou stan/as, cach
sishat. old he is, he rhymingababc
ung ofcigh
ocdeenthe first stanza
as
does likcthe country inwhich
not stanza the
ocountry forold men." A he now poct is
tis
hat the country referred to hcre Norman Jelfares and living
Daniel Albright
details may be Ireland
"hc
"thefollowing suggest that the country is Albright wriles
lmon-strcams; but the line
also contains Ireland, lanousfor
i o f the Young, the Celtig name forpun
a on Tir na
nog.
paradise. Ycats Iitcrally
thc
httthal
thought haltthis first linc should read:
'Old nien should at one time
In the early quit a
the young
drafts Yeats intended further tocouniry where
old and the young by juxlaposing the 'old gods' of contrast the
nfant Christ, 'a smiling child upon his mothcr's knces'pagan Ireland with the
630). But A.E. Dyson disagrees (..)." (Albright.
with them: Idisagrccwith Jelfares
Comment that is intended (the use of "This' instcad of That' inin the his

manuscriptversion is irrelevant, sinceclearly all changcs were madc toward

the eflect of the work as finally
printod.)
I have ncver doubted that the
country' isa symbolicisland or contincntof"theyoung'.allegorised in the
first stanza, and akin tothe island
which The Wanderings of Oisin' (1889)
pioneered. It is an emphatic start, even if the first reading. as I have said,
might seek toachieve neutrality. In otherwords, the statlcnient will be made
to sound in essence a commonplace, a truism, requiring nmatter-of-fact
recognition, without special emotion." (Dyson, 49). However, the poet is
indignant of his country because hçre cveryone. particularly the young
are in one
follk, are given to sensuality. Here the young boys and girlsare
the salmons jumping
another' sarms, the birds are singing on thc trees,
inthe scas-all thcsc are romantic scenes
and the mackerelsareswimming earth. About the
the sensuousness of his country, i.e., of this
inplying "Stallworthy quolesa first
writcs:
arms',Jeffares
phrase 'In one another's
which the poet writes that thc time has
come to speak
in
and illegible draft containsthese
lines'For many loves
have

loves 'in my firstyouth'and

ofhis take body/That they might
offmy
clothes... but now
I will
taken off n1y In 'that'. as Stallworthy
I which they (had longed).
enfolded in that for (effares, 213).Thercforg,
according
be soul. snsuality.
pointsout, is
probably thepoet's
young/lnonc
another's arms' refcrsto
taken off
The loves have
Albright, refcrs to 'For many
to Daniel
for this, again, salmons refcrs to the memory ofthe
poet
of
sexuality, Hence, falling
falling the
rather
The of at Galway. union
clothes."
the fallingofsalmons and mental
my
his wife
consisting
physical
of
showing love,
of his mean
worldly
s a l m o n s may
 212

of the
oppositc sexes, The
mackerel
Yeats Pctry and Plays
'coming in' poet also
remen
(Jcffares.214).
are
cngrossed The poct
to
harbours
alsoreme
remembers the
bours and shores
memories of the
in the west of
,lesh
embers*"'Fish,
Ireland
only in apdSowl,-all tha
first stanza births,
n the
ousness and deaths
sensuou
that in sch country (in The poei means
engrosscd in sensuousness. a
this worlul).
t

art and plhilosophy the and conscquently, cverybody isCverybody forge

getful o«
philosphy are unaging becausc
two "Monumentsofunaging intcilect
will cternally aspirc aftcr
men
An ad
OCcause these two have thes
ncse and
a sort of etcrnal
ontological cxIstcncc)
Is
inthe scoond stanza, thc poet tclls us that inthis country, an agcd ne
neglectedlikc a" paltry thing". He says that an manislikca
coat upon a old latters
stick*" a
after the hcavenly bliss: caricature of a man-unlcss the old man asni
unless/Soul clapits hands and sing. The clause
sing'" "recalls Blakc's vision of hisbrother'clay
"Soul clap its hands and
clappingits hands, as it flew upto heaven." (Jeflarcs, st
herc adds:
"according to 4 Vision. p. 168, impersonal214))Danicl Albrio.
and in1partial
such as Rembrandt and
Synge, 'look on and clap thcir hands'artis at the
spectacle of the objective world." (Albright, 630).The poct
that unless an old man elevates himself above mcans to
his say
engages himselfin the pursuits of art and philosophy, he is a
tottering body an
thing. Therefore he wants to leave this country to reach Byzantium contempihle
there is no school of music (sensuality), but wherc hc can whe
study arl and
an
philosophy: art and philosophy that are but "Monuments of its ou
magnificence." With this end in view, i.e., with avicw to studying art and
philosophy, thè poet has set sail and has reached the city of Byzantium
And therefore I have sailed the scas and come/To the holy
city t
Byzantium
In the third stanza, the poct invokes the sages and the wisc men w
are standing in God's holy fire"" as "in the gold mosaicof a wall."Te
phrase "sages standing in God'sholy fire "refers tothestatuesof "mantus
in the fricze at S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna"" in laly,(Jcffares,214
and ihe phrase "gold mosaic ofa wall" symboliscs art. The poct invoks
the saints to come out ofthe "holy fire" and move in a circle (°perneind
gyre") sothat his sensuousness andpassionsmay bediscntangledfromhs
soul. He also asks thcm to teach him how to sing the songs ofthe soul.1

poct urgcs the sagcs and wise men to lift him up from of the dross hisanuns
passions and desires that, even though
he is now an old man,cntail lon
hcart away; sick with desire/And fastcicd 0 to a
Consume my
not know itstnuenalur.
animalThe poet says that his soul docs
he them to take his soul upwards and emplake
therefore. urgcs
Fot (* Selected Pocms
211
andunn uh hih the
sy mbol of etcrnity, for thecily of
is

ntre
thenre of art and
philosophy disciplincs that are cternal, Byrantium is
disciplines
ha hae ctcralapycaland gather me/ntothe artificeof eternity" This
ans tha
cans that the poct wants their help to enjoy the ctcrnal bliss in the
nlncs of art and philosophy "Monuments of unaging intellect
dIs
may be mindcd
remi of Bocthius's (Consolations
ere
Her
one
Philosophy
of
u the fourth or the last stan/a, the poct declares that once he has been
hted up from this sensuous natural world, he will ncver comc back to put
on lesh Once out ofnaturelsshall ncver takc/My bodily form from any Cuk
Rather, he will take such a shapc as "Grociangoldsmiths
"

natural thing itself. Then hc will put on a dress

nakc", that is, hewilltake the formofart enamelling-adressthat will
"hammeredgold and gold
whichis made of Emperor
even toEmperor: "To kcep drowsy
an a
e too astonishing
will like to bca goldcn bird and be sitting on
awake."Or. says the poet, he thc lords and ladies
bugh'"" and sing celestial songs to infatuale
a "golden the past. the present and
And in his songs he will _ing about
ofByzantium. commentson the
future, i.c. he will sing about cternity Danicl Albright
the of
line: "the poet, fastened1o the temporal world. dreams
concluding
history(This cnding
eternity: the bird, twittering in cternity. sings timc. rcbirth
of
seems to foreshadow
return to nature. perhaps a
a
of the poct's
soul."(Albright,632).)
is almost synonymous with
Ycats wrote another poemthe title of which
wrote Byzantium' about four years
the title ofthispoem: 'Byzantium'. He
Yeats wrote thesccondpoem in order
after Sailingto Byzantium'. Perhaps
Bul actually
toexplicate the meaning contained in*Sailing Byzantium).
to
to F.L.
more difficult. Further. according
the second poem has become even
two similar but no the same themes. Harold
Gwynn, the two poems contain to indicate a crucial
Bloom writes: "F.L. Gwynn was the first, believe,
I
344).
differencebetween the historical vision ofthetwo pocms." (Bloom, from this
In 'Sailing to Byzantium' the poet simply wants to cscape
reach
sensious world whereas in 'Byzantium' he says that the soul cannot
Byzantium unless it is purified through suffering/'Sailingto Byzantium',
oneofthe memorable pocms ofYcats, is very rich in imagery and allegories.
Itis so complex and compact/that the paraphrasing of a single line may
roquire pages of prose. But the theme is pointcd and clear(the poel has
grow n old, his body is decaying and he looks likc, as he ironically tells us,
Tettered coat upon a stick. (cf. T.S. Eliou: I have grownold, I have growm

odl shall wecar trousers rolled ") But he does not despair for that
my
Docause he thinks that the decaying of the body is rather cssential for the
AS union
with the Supreme Spirits-- with art and philosopny. in
 214
W.B Ycats Poetry and Pha
Ryzantium. In this sense, the poem bcars an
optimistic notcBut, as Da
Albright has shown," "for gll its seductiveness,
toconfcss itsinadequacyThere isa covertallusion Byzastism is finally fon
inthe poem's firss
toTir ma nóg. the paradise which Oisin scarchcs in 7The Wanderi
for line
Oisin, and in that carly poem, as in so many latcr oncs, paradise lerimgs
a
famishes the appetites that promises to glut. All represcntations of
supernatural must contain sorie grotcsqueire, a straining for eft effea
juxtaposition of incompatible clements, as Yeats himsclf noted (4v
292); but the poet's metamorphosis into a golden bird, at the end of
poem, may suggest a certain laborious triviality as well as an
splendour, as iflife in Byzantium were at last shown as a super sortoffol
(Albright, 630).
31. The Tower

Thic ic the title noem of the voume of noems 7ho Tovea