The goldsmith’s art can thus give the permanence and significance in life unattainable by flesh.Īt night in the city of Byzantium, “The unpurged images of day recede.” The drunken soldiers of the Emperor are asleep, and the song of night-walkers fades after the great cathedral gong. The notion of permanence is fully delineated by the invocation of the nightingale, the traditional symbol of permanence as described in Keats’s poem. The mosaics depict the spiritual experience stabilised by the knowledge and technique of the artist that ignite the flame of artistic creation. While the city of Byzantium stands as the backdrop to all its violent contrasts, the poet indulges in the exploration of death and the wisdom of the past.

“Byzantium” is bursting with imagery of permanence and immortality in art. It has in fact the same theme that the reader encounters in another of Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming”. William Butler Yeats’s “Byzantium” is a companion poem to to “Sailing to Byzantium” and it chronicles the city of Byzantium towards the end of the first Christian Millennium. Yeats, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood. Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,Īn agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.Īstraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood, I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.Īt midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flitįlames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, Shade more than man, more image than a shade Ī mouth that has no moisture and no breath Night resonance recedes, night walkers’ song The complexity of human flesh is turned into the artefact which preserves it and thus evokes the poet’s immortality in his art.

“Byzantium” pays tribute to the miracle of the work of art the poem itself has overcome the “bitter furies of complexity”.

Byzantium william butler yeats analysis