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Yeats's Sailing to Byzantium.(William Butler Yeats)(Critical Essay)

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From: The Explicator
Date: 20050622
Author:Pruitt, Virginia

Written in 1926, "Sailing to Byzantium," the first poem in Yeats's 1928 collection The Tower, is one of his most famous lyrics. Critics writing on the poem have perceived Byzantium as, variously, a representation of the imagination, the imaginative act, the soul, vision, and Unity of Being. (1) It has also consistently been interpreted as the source and the symbol of supremely beautiful and enduring artifacts. The poem's major and most obvious theme centers on the contrast between that which decays and ultimately perishes (the human body) and that which is unchangeable and ...

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