SOURCE: “Yeats' Golden Tree and Birds in the Byzantium Poems,” in Modern Language Notes, Vol. 67, No. 6, June, 1952, pp. 404-07.

In the following essay, Dume considers the origin of the tree and birds in “Sailing to Byzantium.”

In William Butler Yeats' Byzantium poems, the imagery of the golden tree and the golden birds is striking enough to warrant a further consideration of its genesis in the poet's mind. Although commentators have speculated on the possible sources of this imagery, no decision could be reached until the books Yeats read and the books Yeats did not read were known to us. Investigation of his reading now points to a specific volume which almost certainly provided him with the picture of the golden tree and the golden birds.

In “Sailing to Byzantium,” written in 1926, we find the lines:

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any...