Source: Parks, L. C. “The Hidden Aspect of ‘Sailing to Byzantium.’ Études Anglaises 16, no. 4 (October-December 1963): 333-44.

In the following essay, the author shows that “the form of ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ closely follows the form of a Rosicrucian initiation into an ideal order of reality” and that “by means of this poem, Yeats achieves his lifelong goal: a fusion of his esthetic with an occult idealism.”

Yeats' “Sailing to Byzantium”¹ is deceptively plain and promises far more meaning than it will yield the unaided reader. I hope to make clear some of the hidden aspect of the poem by relating it to its genesis; that is, to its inception and development as they can be seen through Yeats' perennial search for unity; in the significance he attached to historical Byzantium; and especially in the place Rosicrucianism held in his life and thought. By this line of investigation, I would...