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Yeats’s Poetry

For insight into how “Sailing to Byzantium” fits in with other of Yeats’s key poems, consult this guide.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

Like “Sailing to Byzantium,” Tennyson’s poem features a first-person speaker who, in his advancing age, makes the decision to set off on one last journey. Each in their own way, these poems meditate on the pursuit of meaning in the face of one’s mortality.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls”

“The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls” is another poem about the challenges of navigating old age. But whereas Longfellow’s poem meditates on the smallness of an individual life, “Sailing to Byzantium” presents a speaker with great ambitions for transcending that smallness.

Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

McCarthy’s novel from 2005 takes its title from the famous opening line of Yeats’s poem: “That is no country for old men.” Though the subject matter of the novel differs drastically from that of the poem, it is worth considering what thematic parallels might link these otherwise vastly divergent works.

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