Yeats' poem Sailing to Byzantium was my favorite of the poems we were suppose to review this week. The imagery that Yeats' writes is outstanding. I can picture every word as if I was there. The first line when Yeats' writes "that is no country for old men", I picture the movie No Country For Old Men. It is basically the same thing. Both tell about the country being for youth and lively things, so old men are out of date.
The old man wants to be young again. I see this in me when I get older. The old speaker in the poem talks about going to Byzantine and trying to gain life. I don't see me doing this, but I will find my own Byzantine. Whether it is going tanning to get a bronzed body when I am 50 years old and not attractive anymore or jumping out of a plane to feel the thrill of life, I will find my Byzantine.
Many men go through a mid-life crisis and I believe this poem is talking about the speaker going through one of his. If I think harder about what I will do, it will have to be a car. I will probably buy a fast convertible and drive it across the country with some of my friends that are going through their mid-life crisis also.
The fascination with the artificial as superior to the natural is a major theme in this poem. He believes that tales are better than life. Sometimes we wish that our life was like a cartoon, and I believe this is what he (the speaker) is thinking when he writes about Byzantine. He talks about no longer taking his body as a natural thing once he is out of the natural world. This shows that he (again being the old speaker) wishes his life to be a fairytale. A fairytale never dies and the old man is getting closer and closer to death. A fairytale stays youthful and innocent it's entire life, which is the dream of the speaker and of every person in the world.
This was a very inspiring poem and one that enjoyed reading and analyzing.
