“Sailing to Byzantium” Symbols
Symbol Gold
Gold is an ancient symbol not just for value and status, but for spiritual treasure. Because of
its brilliance and the fact that it doesn't tarnish, it's often used to represent things of true
deep worth—especially the riches of the soul.
It serves all these roles here, and more. Gold, in "Sailing to Byzantium," is always associated
with transcendent, eternal art. "God's holy fire" itself is likened to gold mosaic. In the final
stanza, when the speaker is imagining what it will be like when his soul has truly moved
beyond the confines of his body, he'll take on a form that is altogether golden—that is,
immortal, beautiful, and perfected. Gold, in this poem, isn't just raw wealth, but an immortal
beauty that has been painstakingly shaped.
Art
Two kinds of artistry play powerful symbolic roles in "Sailing to Byzantium": music-making
and visual art.
These different art forms have a complicated relationship to each other here. Music and
song are used as a metaphor for what the soul needs to do to attain immortality (as when
the speaker asks the "sages" to be "the singing-masters of my soul"). Music is in some ways
both an ephemeral and an eternal art: while songs can be passed down, they also disappear
as soon as they're sung. Visual art-making, on the other hand, is a kind of preservation that
outwits time in a different way. The speaker sees the "sages standing in God's holy fire / As
in the gold mosaic of a wall": here, the mosaic and eternal transcendence look just each
other.
The point here is that art doesn't just outlive humans, but somehow resembles eternity itself.
This is "the artifice of eternity": art represents what is immortal through what is mortal, and in
doing so helps humans to imagine something past their bodily lives.
Birds and birdsong
Birds appear at two points in the poem: in the thoughtless world of the young, and in the
transcendent world of Byzantium. They thus play a complicated role, serving at once as
symbols of mortality and immortality.
In the first stanza, the birds are called "those dying generations." These birds sing
beautifully, yet (as animals) they're unaware of their own mortality. Their song here thus
represents fleeting, ephemeral beauty.
By the end of the poem, however, the speaker himself imagines taking on the form of a
golden bird once he's out of his mortal body. In this role, he'll be able to communicate the
wisdom of eternity to the living—to "sing," metaphorically, for all those "lords and ladies of
Symbol Gold
Gold is an ancient symbol not just for value and status, but for spiritual treasure. Because of
its brilliance and the fact that it doesn't tarnish, it's often used to represent things of true
deep worth—especially the riches of the soul.
It serves all these roles here, and more. Gold, in "Sailing to Byzantium," is always associated
with transcendent, eternal art. "God's holy fire" itself is likened to gold mosaic. In the final
stanza, when the speaker is imagining what it will be like when his soul has truly moved
beyond the confines of his body, he'll take on a form that is altogether golden—that is,
immortal, beautiful, and perfected. Gold, in this poem, isn't just raw wealth, but an immortal
beauty that has been painstakingly shaped.
Art
Two kinds of artistry play powerful symbolic roles in "Sailing to Byzantium": music-making
and visual art.
These different art forms have a complicated relationship to each other here. Music and
song are used as a metaphor for what the soul needs to do to attain immortality (as when
the speaker asks the "sages" to be "the singing-masters of my soul"). Music is in some ways
both an ephemeral and an eternal art: while songs can be passed down, they also disappear
as soon as they're sung. Visual art-making, on the other hand, is a kind of preservation that
outwits time in a different way. The speaker sees the "sages standing in God's holy fire / As
in the gold mosaic of a wall": here, the mosaic and eternal transcendence look just each
other.
The point here is that art doesn't just outlive humans, but somehow resembles eternity itself.
This is "the artifice of eternity": art represents what is immortal through what is mortal, and in
doing so helps humans to imagine something past their bodily lives.
Birds and birdsong
Birds appear at two points in the poem: in the thoughtless world of the young, and in the
transcendent world of Byzantium. They thus play a complicated role, serving at once as
symbols of mortality and immortality.
In the first stanza, the birds are called "those dying generations." These birds sing
beautifully, yet (as animals) they're unaware of their own mortality. Their song here thus
represents fleeting, ephemeral beauty.
By the end of the poem, however, the speaker himself imagines taking on the form of a
golden bird once he's out of his mortal body. In this role, he'll be able to communicate the
wisdom of eternity to the living—to "sing," metaphorically, for all those "lords and ladies of
