Jazz & poetry: W.B. Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium". An accompanied reading.

📖 W.B. Yeats wrote "Sailing to Byzantium" (published in The Tower in 1928) at the age of 62 — a meditation on ageing, artistic immortality, and the soul's longing to ...transcend the merely physical world. Byzantium, for Yeats, was not a historical place but a symbol of timeless art: the golden mosaics, the singing birds of hammered gold, the "artifice of eternity."

🎵 In this reading, the poem is accompanied by jazz (a Suno-assisted original composition) — a music that, like Yeats's late style, balances formal structure with passionate improvisation, and finds something eternal in the fleeting moment.

Poem: "Sailing to Byzantium" — W.B. Yeats (1928, The Tower)

Find more experimental poetry videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzVb6yL_jY68I1Si1Cm_8hn2CYrjzkiiI

If you're interested in exploring more poetry (readings & analysis) with me, do subscribe to my channel — and feel free to share your own thoughts on the poem in the comments below.

The jazz sound track in this video was created with the help of AI tools. The poem was written by W.B. Yeats. Everything else - the reading of the poem, the video recording, etc. - is entirely my own.Show More

2 Comments

@noriokawakubo9508

March 10, 2026 1:23 pm

I greatly admire your unique approach to English poetry. Your YouTube post offers a wonderful synthesis of music and poetic expression.

@anosensei

March 10, 2026 10:30 pm

Thank you Norio!

W.B. Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium – Experimental Reading (Jazz)