Friday, April 26, 2019

Upsoaring wings: A tattered coat upon a stick


William Butler Yeats wrote “Sailing to Byzantium” in 1928, when he was 60; he was exploring the experience of growing old. “An aged man is but a paltry thing.” Hard truth, to be sure. Yeats figuratively consults the sages of ancient Byzantium—the seat of the Eastern Church—on how to reconcile the old body/soul human dilemma.

These days men are more likely to turn to cosmetic surgeons and investment bankers than gold-mosaiced lords and ladies of a former empire when confronting their age, but this is still worth consideration.

“Sailing to Byzantium”

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.



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