Art, Immortality, Religion and Spirituality in W.B. Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium

The numerous analyses of Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" seem to fall into two main groups:Firstly, a minority of critics like John Crowe Ransom feel that the poem is "more magical than religious . . . and its magnificence a little bit forced."Secondly, a great majority of critics that praise it for its perfect structure and its magnificent exaltation of art. Typical of this second group are Louis