William Butler Yeats's poetry in phases 3 and 4

William Butler Yeats: Poetry of phase 3 and 4

William Butler Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium

In this poem, the speaker is referring to the country that he has recently left. He sees the country as not being a fitting country for old men, because it is full of life and youth. He sees the young people lying within one another's arms, fish in the waters, and birds in the trees. Summer is happening there, and during the summer the young are so caught up in the music and magic of that season that they neglect those that are old. Even though these older people have a great deal of intellect and information that they can offer, the young people are not interested. They want, instead, to ignore the intellect in favor of the joy of being together in summertime, and the fish and birds that are mentioned appear to share this feeling.

Old men are seen to be paltry because they cannot sing and clap and do all of the things that they younger people do. The only way that the soul of a person can truly learn to sing, according to the speaker, is by studying the monuments that have been created by and to the magnificence of the individual, and because of this the speaker decides to leave that place and sail on the sea, until arriving at Byzantium, which is seen as a holy city.

From there, the speaker addresses the sages and asks that they teach him to sing. In other words, he is tired of the life that he has on this earth, and he wants to give up his earthly form and move on to what comes next. He feels that he is still fastened to something (his body) that is dying, and he wants to set free his soul and move into what eternity has to offer to him, where there is no 'old' and no one that does not know how to 'sing.' The speaker will then take his form in whatever he likes, such as a golden bird, and will not be concerned with these earthly issues anymore. The speaker wants to pass on, out of this world, and move away from being old and unnoticed as he has been for some time. Life, he apparently feels, is for the young, and since he does not have the abilities of youth, he wants to 'get them back' by moving into what is next.