The earlier Sailing to Byzantium is better known, but Byzantium, dated 1930, is surely one of Yeats’s greatest poetic achievements. Although his occult and alchemical preoccupations, collected in that ...

My aunt, a teacher of English, read me the poem at a young age. What struck me then, and today still, was the daunting prospect of one day leaving the realm of “whatever is begotten, born, and dies” ...

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Is this yet a country for old men? As Republicans gather in the Twin Cities, prepared to nominate their oldest first candidate for president ever, 72-year-old ...

After Tuesday’s two early poems by W B Yeats, here is a later one. Byzantium, the modern Istanbul, had obviously mystical connotations for the poet as he contemplates age – “An aged man is but a ...