SOURCE: Holberg, Stanley, M. “Sailing to Byzantium’: A New Source and a New Reading.” English Language Notes 12, No. 2 (December 1974): 112-16.

In the following essay, Holberg examines a new source of inspiration for Yeat's poem.

In a note concerning the golden bird at the end of “Sailing to Byzantium,” “such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold and gold enammeling,” Yeats wrote: “I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.”¹ In their efforts to define that vague “somewhere,” scholars have turned to historical accounts of the palace of the Emperor Theophilus (829-842). Elder Olson cites, in addition to certain Latin writings, Gibbon's Decline and Fall and George Finlay's History of the Byzantine Empire.² James A. Notopoulos suggests two tenth-century accounts and two that were published during Yeat's lifetime. Diehl's Manuel D'Art...