A little while later I was sitting with older woman called May. She was chain smoking. She looked at me speculatively. Maybe you should go to Israel, she said finally.

I didn't ask why. As soon as I could, I booked, and set sail, or rather, first embarked on a train, and then set sail, for the Middle East. For this voyage, I carried a rucksack with a change of clothing, a tiny amount of money, and two books. One was Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the other the Collected Poems of Yeats. It seems a bit odd now to have taken Yeats, because I already knew all the poems I wanted to read again in it by heart. But that's youth for you.

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees -
Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

That is no country

He has left it. You should read it (as Yeats did not) with an emphasis on and a pause after 'That'. It is some way away. He is about to explain what it was about it that forced him to leave it, why it is no country for old men. But first the next lines evoke the intensity of the animal and human sensual world in which all creation

Whatever is begotten, born and dies

is immersed, in that country, and he explains that, caught up in it, it is impossible to focus on

Monuments of unaging intellect.

These are solid, they are real, they command respect, they are not like the sensual world previously evoked with all its natural pull, which is however transitory and subject to time.

It is clear why he cannot remain where he is at this point, though the explanation will change as we move into the poem: it is that the pull of the sensual world is too strong. In this stanza it is seen as simply distracting. There is so far no suggestion that age is a disability. These lines are superb, in Yeats' best style, grave, restrained, eloquent and vivid.

In the second stanza the problem emerges and the situation changes. The only solution to stay alive as an old man is seen as being immersion in the intellectual or spiritual. Soul must clap its hands and sing, and louder sing, in proportion as the body decays. However, as he looks at this, what he sees is no progression, no mentors. 'Monumuments of unaging intellect' has faded, weakened, and turned inward, and he now sees himself studying rather than learning, and studying

Monuments of its own magnificence

There may be monuments of unaging intellect, but they have become inacessible as that.

In the third stanza he evokes the passion and the power of mystical art. Its clear that the sages are in a different state of being from the sensual realm, and one no less deeply felt and rich, which is embodied in the gold mosaics and images of the Byzantine era, and is compared to a purifying fire. 'Perne in a gyre' is unfortunate. It seems clear that the expression had a personal meaning for Yeats. But however the sages move, whether perning or not, and whether in a gyre or otherwise, adds nothing to the force of the invocation, which is to come down from the realm of the fires of God, and to grant his request. It is the request and the reason for it that gives the lines power:

Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal, it knows not what it is

I had wild Jack for a lover
Though like a road
That men pass over
My body makes no moan
But sings on

All things remain in God

Here, less specific but equally direct, it succeeds. Notice the last line of this stanza however, and the use of 'artifice'. It is not an unequivocally enthusiastic expression. The artifice of eternity may be permanent, but it is an artifice. And we continue in the next stanza to see the view move, just as the view of monuments of unaging intellect moved, to the likely consequences of obtaining what he asks.

We should read 'once out of nature' and the statement that his bodily form will never be taken from 'any natural thing' while referring back to the first stanza with its vivid evocation of the pull of the natural. In these first lines we are being told that something is being lost, and that the draw and power of what is lost is growing more apparent to the speaker the closer he comes to losing it. In the last lines this deprecation of the future grows more definite. The result will be to become a thing set on a golden bough, keeping a drowsy emperor awake. It is not an undertaking of any great depth. Nor is it a very interesting prospect to sing to the court of

What is past, or passing, or to come

which echoes pallidly 'whatever is begotten born and dies' and makes one aware of the real nature of the bargain. It is not singing school either, here.

At the end of the poem, the speaker has not yet made the transition nor had his heart consumed away. He remains looking with a double view at the two states, at their two different attractions, and sees clearly four things: what they both are, and what they both are for him. And there he rests.

The poem is not, as some have thought, and as it is apparently often taught, a hymn to the permanent world of art and the intellect. Nor is it, as one might be tempted to read it, a rejection of these things in favor of the life of the senses and passions, and a statement of regret for them. It is 'casting a cold eye, on life, on death'. It is looking at both as they are, fully realized, and no more. The country being left is not Ireland either. It is humanity.

You find a similar, much briefer version of the stance in 'Speech after long silence', with the lines

Bodily decrepitude is wisdom. Young
We loved each other and were ignorant.

You find it again even more tersely in The Statues:

And pressed at midnight in some public place,
Live lips upon a plummet measured face.

The same arts that did gain
A power, must it maintain.

...That thence the Royal Actor born
The Tragick Scaffold might adorn
While round the armed Bands
Did clap their bloody hands.
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable Scene:
But with his keener Eye
The Axes edge did try
Nor call'd the Gods with vulgar spight
To vindicate his helpless Right,
But bow'd his comely Head,
Down as upon a Bed.
This was that memorable Hour
Which first assur'd the forced Pow'r.

I read Yeats and waited for passion, which eventually came. The intellectual monument that is the Critique remained largely unscaled, in those days.

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