Sailing to Byzantium - W. B. Yeats (Powerful Life Poetry)

Read by Doug Barron
Music by Hammock
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William Butler Yeats was a Nobel Prize winning Irish writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

"Sailing to Byzantium" is Yeats' definitive statement about the agony of old age and the imaginative and spiritual work required to remain a healthy individual even when the heart is "fastened to a dying animal" (the body).

Yeats's solution is to leave the country of the young and travel to Byzantium, where the sages in the city's famous gold mosaics could become the "singing-masters" of his soul. He hopes the sages will appear in fire and take him away from his body into an existence outside time, where, like a great work of art, he could exist in "the artifice of eternity."

In the final stanza of the poem, he declares that once he is out of his body he will never again appear in the form of a natural thing; rather, he will become a golden bird, sitting on a golden tree, singing of the past, the present, and the future.

[RedFrostMotivation]

The newest addition to our Powerful Life Poetry series. Let us know if there are any poems you'd like to hear in future episodes! Best - RF

[athenassigil]

I'm in the late autumn of my life, heading slowly, but surely to the winter and then the end. This poem finally makes sense, as when I was young, my reading was for the mind of a man-child, fecund with life and seemingly limitless now... I see as Yeats will soon end and I shall be here, no more. But still, with poetry like this, what consolation! I'd also add that the narration was so beautifully read, pronounced and is how mere words, become the magic of poetry.

[colinellesmere]

My dear friend Kevin. The most knowledgeable man I have known is dying of cancer. He has a very short time to live. But these final months we have gotten closer through a shared interest in poetry I never knew we had. Poems like this as he enters the final phase of life are so pertinent and so absolutely relevant. On this channel there are so many great poems and renditions for the RL toughest of times. And in that toughness is tempered a stronger hope that no mortal ailment can destroy. The viewers of this site will almost all be kindred souls. Searching the greatest words man can speak of the unexplainable that can be known and understood.

[Priestbokmei]

I’ve rarely enjoyed poetry reading until I stumbled upon this channel. Mr. Barron’s voice and accompanying music, is truly captivating.

[rexnemorensis]

I keep returning to this poem. It has an overpowering majesty, and a noble, tragic quality to it. To hear it is to understand the state of a soul that is ready to transcend its earthly condition.

[Mreyna]

Incredible video, incredible channel. It seems as though the value of poetry has been forgotten. The lessons that you can learn from the emotions of those who lived in the past. If videos were shown like this in elementary schools around the country, it would make a world of a difference I imagine. I had a teacher in 1st grade who loved poetry and shared that love with us students.

[phucyu]

This is my new favorite channel. I used to love poetry when I was a boy. I used to write my own. As I aged, I stopped. I forgot how as life swept me along on what has been a very tumultuous and painful journey. As I've been watching these videos I feel like that young boy again. I feel like that boy that read Shakespeare's sonnets for the first time and fell in love with them.

Thank you. I've rediscovered a part of myself that I thought that I'd lost long ago.

[NEMO-NEMO]

I think poetry will once again be understood, more deeply, by all of us in the coming years. I’m not quite certain it’s attraction in the first place, but I think it’s words put into a rhythm, a picture of human emotion, a pounding of ideas by men and woman who were given that gift of words. It sends the reader into a private space of self discovery, of the connections we have with one another through shared experiences.

[dlgm]

A holy poem, majestically delivered. Thank you.

[barrymoore]

A magisterial poem. Conjuring a holy city of the imagination, Yeats invokes the Platonic realm of the Ideal, where he hopes his spirit to abide in an eternity beyond this coarse, compromised mortal register of existence. A thing of beauty, whose meaning will resonate as long as men continue to grow old and die.

[nathanhaigler]

I can’t listen to any oration other than this. It’s just so good

[williamhutcheson]

Haven't heard this since my college days. It still grips me. Thanks for posting.

[dawidwidera]

When read this poem for the first time I didn't understand it. After reading it 10 times it became one of the best poems I have ever read.

[loknathbattula]

Thanks for bringing back the magic of poetry through your recitation

[otee]

Yeats poem I need to listen more than once and discover a beautifully woven whole about life, aging and death but after death too💥💫❣️👌🌹

[fryuppe]

A great, great poem, honoured by a narration and presentation of almost hallucinatory presence.

[biswanathmukherjee]

A poem...a voice...a spirit...timelessly pertinent...

[WilliamAmes-tqmo]

Indeed, I have chosen to continue my career in teaching for what is now fifty one years. At the beginning of this just completed year, I met the most totally empathic and 'MIndheart Beautful' student whom I have ever had the pleasure to know. We began our one year independent study with this most holy of poems and, as a benediction to this young Queer man, I have just sent it to him to close the curtain upon our work. Schools have junked the poets and poems that deserve to be truly 'grokked .. in him I know that the future of these works will still burn. "Elen sila lumenn omentielveo, " my young friend. Your brilliance and caring warm my soul!

[drmpsinha]

A very clear reading of Yeats' s Sailing To Byzantium . Every word is pronounced clearly and listeners understand the poem effortlessly .👍

[MindinViolet]

Probably my favourite of all short poems.