an image of the world of youth full of life love and energy Young lovers embrace each other birds sing and the waters are alive with fish Yeats writes That is no country for old men The young In one another s arms birds in the trees This world is beautiful and full of sensual joy but it ignores old age The speaker feels that he no longer belongs here In this lively world the old are neglected This marks the starting point of his journey Journey to Byzantium Seeking Spiritual Light The poet then turns away from this world of pleasure He compares an old man to a tattered coat upon a stick This image shows how the body grows weak and ugly with age Yet he believes the soul can still live strongly if it turns away from the physical body and seeks the spiritual To give life to the soul he begins his journey to Byzantium a city full of religion wisdom and art Transcending Mortality Yeats imagines himself sailing across the seas to reach the holy city And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium Here Byzantium stands as a symbol of the spiritual world In this city art and wisdom last forever even after the body dies Unlike the short life of the human body the beauty of art and the purity of spirit remain eternal Transformation into Art Immortal Life In Byzantium Yeats sees sages holy men standing in God s holy fire These holy men are free from the limits of the human body They exist in a state of spiritual immortality like the golden mosaics that shine forever in the churches of Byzantium Yeats prays to them to guide his soul and make it eternal In the last stanza the poet dreams of becoming a work of art himself He imagines turning into a golden bird not tied to the weakness of the body As a bird made of gold he would sing forever in the emperor s palace Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past or passing or to come Here the golden bird is a symbol of eternal art and song lasting forever beyond death In the end the poem shows Yeats journey from the sensual world of youth to the timeless world of spirit and art He wants to escape the pain of aging and become something immortal His vision of Byzantium and his dream of transformation into art reflect the poet s wish to leave behind the mortal body and achieve eternal spiritual life