![]() The first stanza begins with the notion that the poet’s home is no place for old men and goes on to describe features of the Ireland he knew, a place for the young, enjoying nature and caring little for the intellect and experience of the old. So there is progression and resolution in the poem. The first sets the context, the second deepens the dilemma and introduces the resolution, the third explains what the poet is seeking and the fourth brings the poet to his eternal destiny. The poem is made up of four stanzas, each of 8 lines. Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder singĪnd therefore I have sailed the seas and comeĬome from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,īut such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make ![]() The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,įish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long In one another’s arms, birds in the trees, So Yeats advises going to a place where contemplation and reflection on timeless wisdom are possible, and, for him, this is symbolised by sailing to Byzantium, to live with sages and priests, wise men who will welcome him. The everyday hustle, bustle, energy and commerce of life in one of western Europe’s big cities, I guess Dublin in Yeats’s case, is no place for an old man, who has no more need to earn a living or raise a family, and indeed it is easy for the old to be marginalised. ![]() But it also sets the tone for the rest of this poem and explains the title and conclusion of the poem. You have a good blog.The first line of Yeats’ poem, Sailing to Byzantium will be familiar to movie fans as the title of a very fine, and very violent movie that came out a few years ago, No Country for Old Men. Several of my poems have been featured in Belle Reve Literary Journal, for anyone who might be interested. My make-love stuff’s lonely, my fancy girl stuff’s onlyīeggar maid, angry fragments of heart in handĭance in glee, happiest ever after, just me They’ll be ruttin’ a corpse, throat ‘n a rope No God in No-Girl’s Land nohow! Mine rise, Wow, Wow, Wow It should be obvious that she is best friends with Alice of Wonderland (her only friend).īut No-Girl’s Land’s no dream, in nightmares I scream I didn’t include the poem in the book for reasons still unclear to me but this Yeats poem forced it back into my memory. Living in terrible conditions, she created the following poem, threw it into the ocean believing that, somehow, if justice still existed, it would eventually bring him to her. Holly Pleasance, the heroine of my novel, when 14, imagined a future with a virtual lover. However, I would never want to lose them and some part of me envies the girl who wrote them.Īs always with Yeats, the language is exquisitely lyrical - especially those final two lines, I just love: “Set all her blood astir/ And glittered in her eyes”. Whenever I read over the poems I wrote as a teenager, many of them do make me cringe at my earnestness and naivety. There is the idea here that though youth can be naive and sometimes really cringe-worthy, it is something nevertheless precious and pure. It was a comfort to hear in this poem that he valued the “wild” spirit of youth and that idealism, because there is obvious disapproval of the older woman (“she broke heart for her”) and “denies/ And has forgot”. There was something very comforting in this poem for my teenage self, to feel that someone as erudite and successful (the absolute pinnacle of what success meant to me at the time) as Yeats could speak in this way to a young girl. When I was a teenager, I was more besotted with Yeats, Keats and the Bronte sisters than any of the spotty, obnoxious boys in my class! It is only for this reason, I think, that for me this poem was more about a young girl’s wild, Romantic, idealist ambitions fancying herself as a poet, rather than any romantic (with a small ‘r’) ideals of love. I love the way that this wise, worldly voice tells the young girl that he understands “What makes heart beat so” - her Romantic ideas - her naivety? - and that though most adults might have forgotten how they were themselves in youth, he has never forgotten. ![]() I first read To a young girl when I was a teenager, and it felt to me at the time that Yeats was speaking directly to me, and that he understood me I remember that feeling distinctly.įor me, this poem is the voice of the older, male poet to a young girl full of Romantic notions. I tend to prefer Yeats’ earlier work because I am more drawn to Romantic poetry than I am political poetry. It is from Yeats’ 1919 collection, The Wild Swans at Coole, which is amazing, and which contains most of my favourite of his works.
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