2. The Yeats •
•
William Butler Yeats was born in
Dublin, Ireland on June 13, 1865.
Parents were John B. Yeats and
Family •
Susan Mary Pollexfen
Yeats had three siblings: Susan,
Elizabeth, and Jack.
• John B. Yeats, William’s father, was
a lawyer by trade and left it to
become a painter. His mother
came from an affluent Irish family.
• All of his sibling pursued artistic
careers. His brother was a painter
and his sisters were involved in the
arts-and-crafts movement.
• John B. Yeats was a Republican
and influenced his son’s later
beliefs. Yeats’s mother was raised
by a loyalist.
• The Yeats family were Anglicans
A portrait of WB Yeats by his living in a deeply Catholic Ireland.
John B. Yeats done in 1900
3. Moving and • The Yeats family moved to
London when William was very
Education •
young.
His mother Susan introduced
him to Irish folklore.
• Yeats never went to school
until he was eleven at a
grammar school in England.
• His family moved back to
Ireland where he attended
high school.
• His mother introduced her
children to County Sligo. Sligo
became a very important
place to Yeats both spiritually
and in his later career.
• Yeats attended an art school,
Light Green: Republic of Ireland but left it after two years to
Pink: Northern Ireland pursue becoming a writer.
Dark Green : County Sligo
4. Yeats pursued writing with a
The Poet
•
passion and took many
different approaches and
interests that he expressed in
his work.
• Yeats is primarily seen as a
modernist.
• Yeats was not only a poet, but
a playwright, an essayist, a
social critic, and a short story
writer.
• His greatest influences were
the great English Romantics;
namely, Shelley, Spenser, and
Blake.
• Attempted to mix English and
Irish culture while being a
notable Republican.
• Took a special interest in Irish
folklore, the occult, and the
oriental.
• Yeats died in France on
January 28, 1939.
Yeats in 1911 by George Charles
Beresford
5. Sailing to Byzantium (1928)
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
That is no country for old men. The young As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
– Those dying generations – at their song, And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas, Consume my heart away; sick with desire
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long And fastened to a dying animal
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. It knows not what it is; and gather me
Caught in that sensual music all neglect Into the artifice of eternity.
Monuments of unageing intellect.
Once out of nature I shall never take
An aged man is but a paltry thing, My bodily form from any natural thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing make
For every tatter in its mortal dress, Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
Nor is there singing school but studying To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Monuments of its own magnificence; Or set upon a golden bough to sing
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To lords and ladies of Byzantium
To the holy city of Byzantium. Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
6. The structure of ―Sailing‖ is
Breaking Down
•
sophisticated and concise.
the Poem Its verse form is called “Otta
Rima”.
• Otta Rima’s verse style is
related to the fact that
each stanza has eight lines.
• The Otta Rima’s rhyme
scheme is “a-b-a-b-a-b-c-
c”.
• The poem is styled in iambic
pentameter where there is
an accent on every second
beat of the syllables used in
that line.
A Byzantine Mosaic
7. Yeats and the Motifs • ―Sailing to Byzantium‖ was
of “Sailing to published in 1928. Yeats was
old and was afraid he was
becoming temporal as his
Byzantium” inevitable end approached
him. Age and immortality play
a big part in the poem.
• The world around Yeats was
changing as the old world
slipped into the new.
• The material nature of the
physical is often contrasted
with the eternity of the
metaphysical. Yeats studied
the occult all his life hoping to
unite himself with something
more than the temporary
world around him.
• The mysticism of Byzantium
binds together Yeats interests
in mysterious esotericism and
the beauty of the distant
orient.
Yeats in 1933 by Pirie MacDonald, six
years before his death
8. The First Two Stanzas
First Stanza Second Stanza
―That is no country for old men‖— This stanza reflects specifically on
The poem opens boldly. The aging as the speaker compares
speaker in the poem makes a an old man with a scarecrow.
conclusive statement about the The scarecrow is described as
physical Eden the poem begins worn and tattered; but, by
adding the word “unless”, the
in. speaker seems to offer another
The speaker states in the first line choice other than this vagabond
of the first stanza that this poem state. This choice being sailing to
will be about old age. Byzantium.
Yeats contrasts an Eden-like The metaphysical singing of the
vision of a bountiful place with soul is contrasted with the first
visions of age and physical stanza’s birds physically singing.
This implies the immortal soul
decay and death. sings out inside the aging body.
9. The Last Two Stanzas
Third Stanza Fourth Stanza
The sages invoked in the first line The Speaker imagines escaping the
physical world and his aged body
of the stanza are mystics and and becoming a jeweled bird
masters of esoteric knowledge, made to amuse Byzantine
knowledge that Yeats himself emperors.
studied and tried to understand. Yeats invokes many things over and
Fire has powerful symbolism in this over again in this poem. The
physical singing of birds in the first
stanza. The sages stand in the stanza has become metaphysical
holy fire of God and the Speaker as the speaker dreams of
asks for his heart to be consumed becoming the golden and jeweled
in a sacrifice. bird.
Age is also brought up again. The By leaving the birds in the trees in
the old world and becoming a bird
heart is “fastened to a dying himself in the next, the speaker
animal” while the immortal soul creates a sense of unity in his quest
begs for eternity. for immortality and meaning.
10. Bibliography
Text Based Sources:
• http://literature.proquestlearning.com/quick/displayItemById.do?origin=toc&PubID=kno&
QueryType=reference&ItemID=EALKN129+pqllit_ref_lib
• http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/
• http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/poets/bio/yeats_w.htm
• http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-butler-yeats
• http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/117
Media Based Sources:
• http://www.youtube.com/user/SpokenVerse?feature=watch
Picture Based Sources
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Butler_Yeat_by_George_Charles_Beresford.jpg
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Butler_Yeats_by_John_Butler_Yeats_1900.jpg
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Butler_Yeats.jpg
• http://www.123rf.com/photo_12444627_a-byzantine-mosaic-depicting-a-bird-on-the-floor-
of-the-great-basilica-in-the-ancient-city-of-heracl.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Island_of_Ireland_location_map_Sligo.svg
