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 lifeand 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 solutionit 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
speakers 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 anothers
arms, birds in the treesthose dying generations which discusses the reason for the
speakers 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 readers mind is one of a scarecrowsomething 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 authors personal fear of agingof turning to dust or to mere rags on a
stickdespite 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.