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"Sailing to Byzantium" is a poem by William Butler Yeats, first published in his collection October Blast, in 1927[1] and then in the 1928 collection The Tower. It comprises four stanzas in ottava rima, each made up of eight lines of iambic pentameter. It uses a journey to Byzantium (Constantinople) as a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Yeats explores his thoughts and musings on how immortality, art, and the human spirit may converge. Through the use of various poetic techniques, Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" describes the metaphorical journey of a man pursuing his own vision of eternal life as well as his conception of paradise. The poem was dedicated to the artist Norah McGuinness.