"Byzantium" is founded on a paradox. In this poem, the real world of mortal human beings and the ideal world of art and spiritual perfection are opposites—but they also rely on and grow out of each other.
This poem's perspective on the world is, in one way, Platonic. That is: like the philosopher Plato, the speaker feels that the physical world is really just a shadow of a perfect spiritual world. The miraculous "bird" of "golden handiwork" that appears in the poem’s third stanza provides a good example of this philosophy:
- This gorgeous statue is linked to the divine: "starlit" and "moonlit," it's symbolically closer to the heavens than to earth.
- In fact, it represents the eternal ideal of a bird, the most perfect bird there could possibly be. For that reason, it "scorn[s]" the "common bird" of imperfect, mortal flesh and blood.
Art, the poem thus suggests, can reach into the world of perfect, eternal images and bring a glimpse of them back to earth. There's a complication here, though: you can't have art without artists, and artists are no more perfect and immortal than that "common bird." They roll around in the "mire and blood" of everyday life with everyone else.
Strangely enough, then, the ideal world comes in contact with the real world through imperfect, messy mortality. Artists and art, the poem suggests, live paradoxical lives, reaching out to touch the divine from the muddy ground where they stand.
The speaker's strange image of a mummified "superhuman" figure suggests that the rewards of such efforts might be a kind of immortality: like this preserved "shade," artists who make great works might reach a kind of immortality. (This famous poem, which has considerably outlived its author, might be read as a case in point!)