There are several themes that are common throughout the poems of William

Butler Yeats. Many of poems by W.B. Yeats reflect an unrelenting obsession with the

past—both the distant past and that of his personal life—and these fixations are symbolic

of his fear of growing old or aging and a persistent fear of death. There were many things

W.B. Yeats wanted to accomplish, one of which was gaining the hand of his long-time

love Maud Gonne. Images of her, both as she appeared to him in his memory and as

expressed by allusions are frequent throughout Yeats’ poetry as are his numerous

references to the grim process of aging and preparing for death. For Yeats, death or even

aging alone was not the romantic end or dramatic solution—it was an organic process that

caused a man to become hollow and scarecrow-like. One of the most stunning poems

reflecting implicit fear of aging in poems by William Butler Yeats occurs throughout

“Sailing to Byzantium.”

This poem was written in 1926 as W.B. Yeats was growing older and beginning to

realize the meaning and consequences of old age. “Sailing to Byzantium” reflects the

speaker’s desire to return to an older age far from the youthful excesses and their inability

to recognize age and wisdom. One of the important quotes from “Sailing to Byzantium”

is at the beginning and says, “that is no country for old men. The young / in one another’s

arms, birds in the trees—those dying generations” which discusses the reason for the

speaker’s journey. He no longer feels he has a place among the youthful exuberance and

seeks something more fulfilling and ancient. Although the young represented in the poem

by William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” are “those dying generations” they are

nonetheless too engaged with their trivialities to understand the pursuits of an old man

who feels he is condemned to live in an aging body, or “fastened to a dying animal” while

his soul yearns to be free.

To the speaker of “Sailing to Byzantium” by W.B. Yeats and also to the poet

himself, aging is a foul degrading process and the only things that were sustainable and

true are the relics of gold that serve as testaments to an older age such as that in “Sailing

to Byzantium”. All that is organic or living is prone to death and decay, even the young

people at the beginning who are “dying generations” and especially men that are already

advanced in age. It is worth noting in this poem analysis of “Sailing to Byzantium” by

William Butler Yeats that the speaker comments upon both the appearance and

presumably the soul of an aging or old man when he begins the second stanza with the

statement, “An aged man is but a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick, unless / his

soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress.” This

description of an aged man is hollow and devoid of personality. The image that arises in

the reader’s mind is one of a scarecrow—something made from flimsy material without

genuine substance and prone to the elements.

Furthermore, and also important in this analysis of “Sailing to Byzantium” by

William Butler Yeats, the imagery of this scarecrow figure suddenly clapping to prove its

vitality becomes grotesque and nearly absurd, which demonstrates that this is something

rare or perhaps even impossible. While the remainder of the poem “Sailing to Byzantium”

by W.B. Yeats discusses a way for this tattered heap of sticks and old clothing to live on,

this series of imagery tactics on the part of Yeats to express symbols of aging versus

youth are difficult to escape or forget about and it becomes clear that this is a prime

example of the author’s personal fear of aging—of turning to dust or to mere rags on a

stick—despite the somewhat epic ending featuring a man living on through wisdom,

relics, and memory. To a mystic such as W.B. Yeats, the concept of the aging soul

outlasting the “dying animal” of the body is not uncharacteristic and can be witnessed in

several of his later poems as well.