Byzantium by W.B Yeats line by line explanation and analysis

 The poem 'Byzantium' is in fact an imaginary voyage into the celestial world. It is a companion piece to the 'Sailing to Byzantium'.

Poet depicts Byzantium as a place of purgatory or heaven.  The departed soul gets purified once it reaches in Byzantium. Hence the poem is highly philosophical and spiritual as it deals with the voyage of the spirits and its purification.

 

Byzantium was an ancient city in Rome also known as Constantinople, the capital of Roman empire now it is in Istanbul, Turkey. Byzantium is the city of excellence and perfection and the meeting point of East and West, well known for its artistic and architectural marvel.

As far as Yeats is concerned Byzantium is the conceptual creation of the poet. The poem is highly symbolic in nature as every other poems of W.B Yeats. 

As he walks through the streets of his own imagination some images fade away like the drunken soldiers and the prostitutes. The night walkers depart after the great cathedral gong. Still, human life is abounds in complexities,miseries and sorrows. Which infuriates the human vein.

Poet notices an image of man. But he soon realizes that it's a shadow. Still it confuses the poet and it was actually a figure in the shape of a human body. Later, poet finds a moving dead body from the Hades (land of the dead). Once it was a living thing with complexities and furies, now it became a purified soul. The mouth of the soul has no moisture and breath. Poet praises this superhuman figure and contemplates about life in death and death in life.

Poet believes in the notion of life after death as John Donne remarks in his Sonnet 'Death be not proud' that death is an entry into the eternal world and a royal road to  immortality. Human beings are in fact a thin lines between life and death.

Poet moves towards a miraculous golden Bird, a product of handicraft. The reference of this bird is conspicuous in the poem sailing to Byzantium. The bird was placed on the starlit golden bough. He remarks that this bird is immortal. This stanza definitely reminds the readers about a few lines from Ode to a nightingale "Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!". Yeats consider this artistic creation is like a purified soul. The bird sounds like a cock in Hades (cock in Hades is the prophet of rebirth). The golden bird sings about the immortality of the souls. The bird scorns about the ephemeral nature of life, including the ordinary birds or petals (everything that spoils) and all the complexities and dirt of humankind.

 

Forthcoming Stanza reflects the vast knowledge of W.B Yeats about Indian philosophy and Upanishads. 

Poet reaches at the castle of Byzantine Emperor (God). He can see flames at the pavements not fueled by any faggot or any piece of iron. Because the Emperor or the almighty itself made it. No storm can disturb these flames. Here the blood begotten spirits are purified of all their passions in the flames. Souls are dancing by forgetting everything. The dance of agony and purification progresses. Despite they feel pain they remain in a trance like state. Only the complexities and furies burn, the soul remains intact.

Poet envisions the sight of the sea beside the Emperor's castle. Numerous spirits are en route to the heaven, striding on the dolphins and reach at the shore. The golden smithies of the Emperor ( angels) put an end to the torture of earthly existence by giving salvation and a passage to Paradise. What happens here is all the souls are purified in the unusual flame and carried by Dolphins to heaven. As the dolphins moves through the sea by breaking the waves, there slightly forms an image of paradise.