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William Butler YeatsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The speaker begins by lamenting the hardship of life for an aging man who feels unappreciated and anachronistic living amidst the vitality of nature and its cycles of “sensual music” (Line 7). The narrator is at odds with this energetic and lush setting. He is “but a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick” (Lines 9-10). His aging body is compared to tattered coat which clothes his “unageing intellect” (Line 8)—the throne of the eternal soul. These lines demonstrate how “Sailing to Byzantium” is in dialogue with other poems from The Tower. In "Among School Children," for example, the body is also disparaged as “[o]ld clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird,” which establishes an analogical relationship between scarecrows and human beings, implying that a defense of humanity could easily amount to a straw man argument since authentic living is dormant in the mind.
The speaker’s dismissive view of bodies directly coincides with images of sexual activity in nature’s reproductive processes: “Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long / Whatever is begotten, born, and dies” (Lines 5-6). Summer is a life-affirming season, during which the activities of animals—such as hunting and reproducing—reach their peak.
By William Butler Yeats
Among School Children
Among School Children
William Butler Yeats
A Prayer for My Daughter
A Prayer for My Daughter
William Butler Yeats
A Vision
A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka
William Butler Yeats
Cathleen Ni Houlihan
Cathleen Ni Houlihan
William Butler Yeats
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
William Butler Yeats
Death
Death
William Butler Yeats
Easter, 1916
Easter, 1916
William Butler Yeats
Leda and the Swan
Leda and the Swan
William Butler Yeats
No Second Troy
No Second Troy
William Butler Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
William Butler Yeats
The Second Coming
The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
The Wild Swans at Coole
The Wild Swans at Coole
William Butler Yeats
When You Are Old
When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats