Yeats Poem
Summary of the Poem
Stanza 1
.......Old men feel out of place in a land where everything heralds new life: young men with their nubile women, singing and cooing birds, spawning salmon and mackerel. Throughout the summer, animals and fish bring forth new generations. When life is busy reproducing itself, it neglects old men, whose bodies are nothing but monuments of what used to be--although their intellects do not age.
Stanza 2
.......An old man is little more than wrinkled, drooping skin hanging from bones unless his soul--his unaging inner self--claps its hands and sings. But even in that case, all he has to sing about is his past. There is no school to teach him a new song. Therefore, because I myself am an old man, I have come to the holy of Byzantium. (Byzantium became Constantinople, etc.)
Stanza 3
.......In this city are churches with mosaic images of saints on the wall, sages burning with holy zeal. I ask these sages to come forth to teach my soulto sing a new song, one that will lift it out of my dying body and take it to an artificial--that is, manmade--eternity.
Stanza 4
.......Once I am free of my body, I shall not be reborn in a natural body. Instead I will take form in an artificial thing--perhaps an image forged by Grecian goldsmiths, one which can keep a drowsy emperor awake. Or one which, attached to a Golden bough made by smith, can sing of the past, present, or future to the lords and ladies of Byzantium.
EASTER 1916
In "Easter 1916," Yeats asserts that Ireland and its people have been "changed utterly"(79). Yeats memorializes the individuals who sacrificed their lives in the Easter Rebellion as a tribute their ability to transform themselves and the history of Ireland. Through "A terrible beauty"(16) of rebellion and chaos, the leaders of the Easter Rebellion and Irish people assert their coming of age. In "Easter 1916," Yeats suggests that Ireland had to affirm its independence and national identity through rebellion and the
Stanza 1
.......Old men feel out of place in a land where everything heralds new life: young men with their nubile women, singing and cooing birds, spawning salmon and mackerel. Throughout the summer, animals and fish bring forth new generations. When life is busy reproducing itself, it neglects old men, whose bodies are nothing but monuments of what used to be--although their intellects do not age.
Stanza 2
.......An old man is little more than wrinkled, drooping skin hanging from bones unless his soul--his unaging inner self--claps its hands and sings. But even in that case, all he has to sing about is his past. There is no school to teach him a new song. Therefore, because I myself am an old man, I have come to the holy of Byzantium. (Byzantium became Constantinople, etc.)
Stanza 3
.......In this city are churches with mosaic images of saints on the wall, sages burning with holy zeal. I ask these sages to come forth to teach my soulto sing a new song, one that will lift it out of my dying body and take it to an artificial--that is, manmade--eternity.
Stanza 4
.......Once I am free of my body, I shall not be reborn in a natural body. Instead I will take form in an artificial thing--perhaps an image forged by Grecian goldsmiths, one which can keep a drowsy emperor awake. Or one which, attached to a Golden bough made by smith, can sing of the past, present, or future to the lords and ladies of Byzantium.
EASTER 1916
In "Easter 1916," Yeats asserts that Ireland and its people have been "changed utterly"(79). Yeats memorializes the individuals who sacrificed their lives in the Easter Rebellion as a tribute their ability to transform themselves and the history of Ireland. Through "A terrible beauty"(16) of rebellion and chaos, the leaders of the Easter Rebellion and Irish people assert their coming of age. In "Easter 1916," Yeats suggests that Ireland had to affirm its independence and national identity through rebellion and the