SOURCE: “The Byzantium Poems: Yeats at the Limits of Symbolism,” in Concerning Poetry, Vol. 11, No. 2, Fall, 1978, pp. 49-54.

In the following essay, Sarang analyzes the contrasting symbolism in Yeats's Byzantium poems.

O where is the garden of Being that is only known                     in existence As the Command to be never there … ? 

—W. H. Auden, For the Time Being

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot                     say where. 

—T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

The two Byzantium poems constitute one of Yeats's major statements of a recurrent theme in his poetry: the achievement of the Timeless, and its relation to the temporal world. Any artist trying to depict the Timeless in his work must face the impossibility of the task. How can you convey the sense of Being when all you have at your disposal belongs to the world of Becoming? For a poet like Yeats...