Yeats

Sailing to Byzantium is, from the poems we have read, unique in in its ability to separate the body from the heart. This concept is put forth in "Consume my heart away; sick with desire/And fastened to a dying animal." the dying animal that Yeats is referring to in the poem is the speaker. By placing the speaker at the level of animal Yeats is able to heighten the contrast between the ethereal Byzantium and his own mortality.