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Yeats wrote “Sailing to Byzantium” in iambic pentameter, which means that the average line in the poem consists of five iambic feet. (Recall that an iamb has one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable, as in the word “to-day.”) Iambic pentameter has long been a conventional choice for poems dealing with serious subject matter. Lines with fewer than five feet tend to have a sing-song quality that, in some cases, can bring an unwanted lightness to the verse. By contrast, slightly longer lines can sometimes sound more like prose and hence feel too heavy and ponderous. Pentameter offers a happy medium, one that mimics the natural cadences of ordinary speech while still bringing the linguistic refinement associated with poetry. In “Sailing to Byzantium,” Yeats accomplishes this marriage of ordinariness and refinement with uncommon grace. Significantly, the power of his verse depends as much on its general adherence to iambic pentameter as its occasional departures from it.

As an example of how Yeats at once centers iambic pentameter and yet departs from it in rhythmically interesting ways, consider the first six lines of the poem:

That is / no coun- / try for / old men. / The young
In one / an-oth- / er's arms, / birds in / the trees,
—Those dy- / ing gen- / er-a- / tions—at / their song,
The sal- / mon-falls, / the mack- / er-el-crowd- / ed seas,
Fish, flesh, / or fowl, / com-mend / all sum- / mer long
What-ev- / er is / be-gott- / en, born, / and dies.

A quick survey of this passage reveals that the predominant meter is undoubtedly iambic pentameter. Even so, Yeats also works in a fair amount of metrical variation. This variation begins in the opening line, which happens to be the most irregular of the bunch. Indeed, the only iamb in the entire line comes at the end. Prior to that, Yeats uses a trochee (stressed–unstressed), a spondee (stressed–stressed), a pyrrhic (unstressed–unstressed), and another spondee. As the iambic rhythm takes over at the line’s end, the language turns from prose-like and conversational to poetic and stately. The following two lines are both perfectly iambic, which firmly establishes the poem’s predominant meter. Then, once the meter has been established, Yeats begins to introduce further variation. The fourth line contains an anapest (unstressed–unstressed–stressed) in the fourth foot, and the fifth line opens with a spondee. The final line returns to strict iambic pentameter. The subtle modulations of rhythm here and elsewhere in the poem help to shape the cadences of the language in subtle ways that confirm Yeats’s maturity as a poet.

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