Vocabulary in Sailing to Byzantium

Worthless and pitiful; of so little value or importance as to be beneath notice. Here it describes an old man's body as a sorry, contemptible thing compared to the life of the soul.

Torn into ragged shreds and worn out beyond repair. In this poem it describes both a literal coat and, by extension, the decaying body of an old man.

The physical human body, thought of as a temporary garment the soul wears during its earthly life, which ages and eventually dies while the soul endures.

Deeply wise and holy figures, here specifically the saints and scholars depicted in the glittering mosaic artwork of ancient Byzantium, whom the speaker calls on as spiritual guides.

A picture or decorative design made by setting small pieces of colored glass or stone into a wall or ceiling. Byzantine churches were famous for their brilliant gold-background mosaics of holy figures.

To spin or whirl in a spiral motion, drawn from the bobbin (called a 'pern') that spins as thread unwinds. Yeats uses it to picture the sages spiraling downward out of the eternal fire toward him.

A spiral or circular spinning motion. Yeats uses gyres throughout his work as a symbol of the turning cycles of history, time, and the soul's journey.

Teachers who train and perfect the art of song. Here the speaker asks the holy sages to school his soul in the kind of eternal, spiritual singing that transcends the body.

The craft of fusing a smooth, glassy colored coating onto metal by firing it at high heat. Here it describes the decorative finish applied to the golden artificial bird, emphasizing its man-made, imperishable beauty.

Metal shaped by beating it repeatedly with a hammer into a precise, crafted form. The phrase stresses that the bird the speaker wishes to become is a deliberate human artwork, not a creature of nature.