Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”: “Of what is past, or passing, or to come”

William Butler Yeats

Read By: Robert Pinsky

Continuing from The Best Kind of Memorization, thoughts about how Yeats, in “Sailing to Byzantium,” includes along with the historical (“What is past”) and the personal (which is “passing”) the vision of what is to come. The magnitude of the poem includes its mystery.

  • William Butler Yeats
  • 20th Century
  • English
  • What is “Great”
  • Lecture
  • Greatness
  • The Art of Poetry