![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
April is National Poetry Month!
Apr. 30th, 2006 12:06 pmWhen I searching for this poem on Google to copy-paste it into my LJ client, I accidentally typed "saling." Interestingly enough, I still got 44 results. It's a very famous poem.
I believe it is about death, and transcending death, and finding either some kind of eternity or some acceptable illusion of eternity before death. It's among the greatest, if not the greatest of Yeats's poems, and not only my favorite of his, but possibly my favorite poem ever. Sometimes I want to put this in a cage-match with "Dirge Without Music," or that Millay poem that includes the line "I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death." Which is to be preferred by the thoughtful and lively mind: to reject the necessity of death and loss completely, or to seek a spiritual solace against it?
"Sailing to Byzantium," W.B. Yeats.
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
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.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
I believe it is about death, and transcending death, and finding either some kind of eternity or some acceptable illusion of eternity before death. It's among the greatest, if not the greatest of Yeats's poems, and not only my favorite of his, but possibly my favorite poem ever. Sometimes I want to put this in a cage-match with "Dirge Without Music," or that Millay poem that includes the line "I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death." Which is to be preferred by the thoughtful and lively mind: to reject the necessity of death and loss completely, or to seek a spiritual solace against it?
"Sailing to Byzantium," W.B. Yeats.
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
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.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.