]> Byzantium An electronic edition William Butler Yeats Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by Beatrix Färber School of History, University College, Cork First draft. 1027 CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork
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2014 CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland. E930001-098

The works by W. B. Yeats are in the public domain. This electronic text is available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of private or academic research and teaching.

 The poem was written in September 1930, and first appeared in Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems. This information is taken from Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats, p. 352. Editions W. B. Yeats, Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (Dublin: Cuala Press 1932) W. B. Yeats, 'The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats', A new edition', edited by Richard J. Finneran, 1983, second edition 1991]. Literature (selection) W. B. Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, consisting of Reveries over childhood and youth, The trembling of the veil, and Dramatis personae (New York 1938). A. Norman Jeffares, 'The Byzantine Poems of W.B. Yeats', in Review of English Studies, vol. 22, no. 85 (1946) 44–52. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Corrected edition with a new preface (Oxford 1979). [First published New York 1948; reprinted London 1961.] Thomas L. Dume, 'Yeats' Golden Tree and Birds in the Byzantium Poems', in Modern Language Notes, 67.6 (June 1952) 404–407. David I. Masson, 'Word and Sound in Yeats' "Byzantium"', in ELH, 20.2 (June 1953) 136–160. Denis Davison, 'Words and Sopunds in Yeats's "Byzantium"', in Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 7 (1955) 111–114. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan 1957). Curtis Bradford, 'Yeats's Byzantium Poems: A Study of Their Development', in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 75.1 (March 1960) 110–125. W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Macmillan 1961). W. B. Yeats, Explorations: selected by Mrs W. B. Yeats (London/New York: Macmillan 1962). W. B. Yeats, 'Modern Ireland', in Massachusetts Review, 5.2 (Winter 1964) 256–268. Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (New York 1964). Diana Arbin Ben-Merre, 'The Poet Laureate and the Golden Bird: A Note on Yeats' Byzantium Poems', in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 5.1 (1979) 100–103. William Empson, 'Yeats and Byzantium', in Grand Street 1.4 (Summer 1982), 67–95. A. Norman Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats (Stanford 1984); esp. 352ndash;359. Helen Vendler, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form (Oxford/New York 2007). A bibliography is available online at the official web site of the Nobel Prize. See: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-bibl.html The edition used in the digital edition William Butler Yeats Byzantium Richard J. Finneran The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats Macmillan Press London 1991 248–249

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The whole poem.

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 By William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). September 1930 The poem is in English. literary poetry W. B. Yeats 20c Byzantium 2014-03-31 Beatrix Färber ed. SGML and HTML files created. 2014-03-31 Beatrix Färber ed. TEI header created with bibliographic detail; file proofed (1) and encoded for structure; file parsed and validated. 1996 Students at the CELT Project, UCC data capture Text captured The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins. Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Planted on the starlit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow, Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory of changeless metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood. At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood. The golden smithies of the Emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those images that yet Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.