SOURCE: Kerbaugh, J. L. “Yeats's ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ and ‘The Tower’: Dialectic of Body and Intellect.” Yeats Eliot Review 10, no. 4 (fall 1990): 90-4.

In the following essay, Kerbaugh compares the subject matter of two of Yeats's poems.

The common subject matter of “Sailing to Byzantium” and “The Tower”—making one's soul, and coming to terms with old age and death and with the relationship between old age and art—explains clearly enough why Yeats printed the two poems side by side in The Tower, a matter which has nevertheless occasionally puzzled critics.¹ Some question may remain, however, as to why Yeats printed “Sailing to Byzantium” before “The Tower,” which was not only composed a year earlier (1925) but was, more importantly, the title poem of the collection. The most obvious explanation is that Yeats wanted the volume to begin with the greater rather than than the eponymous work. Another is...