Second stanza

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

The second stanza describes elderly humans as thin and frail (II.9-10). This undesirable state can only be eliminated through the efforts of the soul. The soul must sing louder than any fiber in its "mortal dress" (II.12). The song is not learned through any school but rather through studying the aforementioned monuments. With this reasoning, the speaker has arrived outside Byzantium.

Elaborating on the "old men" (I.1) mentioned in the first stanza, the "aged man" (II.1) is described as "paltry," fading into insignificance. Yeats’ use of the phrase "tattered coat upon a stick" (II.10) alludes to the image of a scarecrow. This image provides another link to the first stanza. Where the first stanza grouped the singing birds with the love of youth, the pitiful scarecrow, also related to birds, represents aging. In order to leave the scarecrow’s body, the soul must clap its hands (similar to a bird’s flapping motion) and sing, an activity attributed to birds in the first stanza. Yeats also instills the auditory sensation of singing using strong sibilance found from lines ten through thirteen. With words like “unless,” “soul,” “hands,” “sing,” “dress,” “singing school,” and “studying” (II.10-13), frequent use of “s” sounds form a whispering quality that represent the ascension song desired by the speaker.

The song is learned from another object previously mentioned in the first stanza, the monument of line eight now found again in line fourteen. Previously attributed to “unaging intellect” (I.8), this similar monument is attributed to “its own magnificence” (II.14). Yeats considers the relics of the intellect – the arts – magnificent and beyond time. How the speaker plans to become just as timeless as these monuments is addressed in the final stanza.

With this plan in mind, the speaker, identifying himself as the aged man, comes to Byzantium to learn how to sing and separate his soul from his scarecrow of a body. Concerning Byzantium, Britannica writes, “For Yeats, ancient Byzantium was the purest embodiment of transfiguration into the timelessness of art”. While Byzantium has historically been known to be the artistic and cultural successor of Rome, the speaker also refers to this place as a “holy city” (II.16), attributing not only cultural significance but spiritual significance as well