Premium Content Sailing to Byzantium: Adrift on Perfection
By Sonia Jain - April 20, 2003
In his poem "Sailing to Byzantium," Yeats rejects his perceptions of the sensual mortal world and fondly imagines a paradise of intellectual intransience in Byzantium. The impermanence of human life is recounted, for Yeats who himself is a part of the "dying generation" (Yeats ln 3) creates a bittersweet tone underlying the depictions of vitality…
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