SOURCE: Larissy, Edward. “Yeats the Poet: Golden Wall.” In Yeats the Poet: Measures of Difference, pp. 170-76. Hertfordshire, England: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.

In the following essay, Larissy regards “Sailing to Byzantium” as Yeats's metaphorical escape from Ireland, which he associates with youth and conflict. The author considers the poem to be influenced by Asiatic literary journeys by Byron, Blake, Keats, as well as by historical accounts of early Celtic experiences in Constantinople.

‘Sailing to Byzantium’ (VP [The Variorium Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats] 407-8) offers an extreme version of bitterness towards Ireland: escape. Yet one should beware of a reductionist account of this. The trouble with Ireland in this poem is that it is a country associated with the natural cycle, and thus full of vigorous youth, and the speaker is growing old. The phrase ‘and dies’ seems almost like a concession to a rounded view...