Also according to poets.org, Yeats was involved in the Celtic Revival which was motion against the English rule in Ireland’s cultural influences. Yeats’ poetry “was strongly influenced by Pound, becoming more modern in its concision and imagery, but Yeats never abandoned his strict adherence to traditional verse forms…he remained uninhibited in advancing his idiosyncratic philosophy, and his poetry continued to grow stronger as he grew older” (poets.org). “In 1932 Yeats founded the Irish Academy of Letters and in 1933 he was briefly involved in the fascist Blueshirts in Dublin”(poetryconnection.net). According to “William Butler Yeats Overview” Books & Literature Classics, in 1923, Yeats received a Nobel Prize for Literature. A political and literary activist, Yeats was regarded as a strong contributor to both of these …show more content…
According to British Writers: Retorspective Supplement 1, Yeats wrote “Sailing to Byzantium” at the age of sixty-two. His attraction to mythological characters and imagery is given life as he tells of a poet’s journey to Byzantium. The traveler appears to seek a connection with the afterworld and a release from temporal existence. Discussed in Richard F. Peterson’s The Artifice of Eternity, the poet in “Sailing to Byzantium” is traveling to the holy city where he seeks a religious rebirth by a “perne in a gyre.” The poet wishes that his body and heart may break away from each other so that his soul can gather “Into the article of eternity.” True to his attraction to stories of folklore and tales, Yeats uses imagery to depict the poet’s soul as a golden bird whose song is able to keep “a drowsy Emperor awake” and is able to link the lords and ladies of Byzantium to their past, present, and future. Peterson also tells how the poet goes to Byzantium in hopes to escape the older generations and join the young ones as his life comes to an end. Jay Parini, author of British Writers: Retrospective Supplement 1, unveils the truth behind the poet’s journey in “Sailing to Byzantium.” In lines fifteen-sixteen, Yeats writes “And therefore I have sailed the seas and come/ To the holy city of Byzantium,” Parini discusses the word “therefore.” It reveals