Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium

[grllopez]

This is an interesting poem about aging and preservation and the human body and soul.

Yeats describes the youth as careless and free and disinterested in the elderly. So the elderly speaker is heading off to Byzantium, where the wise men of old (Ancient Times) would be his soul's "singing master." [This was hard for me to understand.]

The speaker looks to the wise men in gold (think of the gold relief art of Byzantium) to separate his soul apart from his body, preserving his soul forever in the "artifice of eternity." [Okaaaay.]

But then this part makes sense, though I could be misinterpreting it: the body is a burden to the soul -- understandably -- full of pain, suffering, decay, and sin. Once the speaker is free of his natural body, he may become a "golden bird" sitting upon the bough of a golden tree, singing of the past, present, and future.

Sometimes I think too deeply about a poem and imagine the poet could have said it a different way; but if this is how Yeats wanted to say it, then I should leave it as is.