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“Sailing to Byzantium” consists of four eight-line stanzas in which the speaker describes the spiritual transformation he is currently undergoing. He describes this transformation as a journey from an unspecified country to the holy ancient city of Byzantium. The speaker spends the first half of the poem outlining the reasons behind his decision to embark on this journey. In stanza 1, he remarks on the world’s fascination with youthful vitality and the consequent lack of consideration for the wisdom enshrined in “monuments of unageing intellect” (line 8). In stanza 2, the speaker turns his attention to the physical and spiritual degradations of age. It is precisely because his native land is “no country for old men” (line 1) that the speaker has decided to leave. Now, having arrived in Byzantium, the speaker spends the second half of the poem focusing on what remains of his journey. In stanza 3, he prays for the sages of the Byzantine church to “gather [him] / Into the artifice of eternity” (lines 23–24), allowing him to access the same form of immortality enjoyed by art. The speaker then concludes the poem with stanza 4, where he imagines himself leaving his organic body behind and being transformed into an artificial bird.

As the above outline suggests, “Sailing to Byzantium” has a relatively simple structure made up of two parts: the passage the speaker has already taken, and the leg of the journey that still lies ahead. What’s key here is that the speaker is on a journey that they have not yet completed, and that this journey consists of both and physical and spiritual components. That is, though he has already made the physical journey to his destination in Byzantium, it remains for the holy city to work its spiritual transformation on him. Yet it’s important to remember that the speaker’s journey to Byzantium must also be understood as a metaphor for his experience as an elderly person nearing the end of his life. Whereas the first two stanzas emphasize how life is a process of gradual degradation, the last two stanzas fantasize about a way to transcend that degradation. In this way, the two parts of the poem may be interpreted symbolically in terms of life and death—or, perhaps better, the profane time of life and the eternity of the afterlife.

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