First published in my private blog on Friday, August 29, 2008
Byzantium is this mythical place in Yeats’ poems that is like a crossroads of the mortal and the immortal; the old and the young; the now and the there. I was reminded of this recently, and looked up the poem in its entirety. What a beautiful poem it is! The imagery of sailing to this mythical place on the wings of youth and strength are vivid, but so also is the concession of youth and even nature itself being temporal and transient.
But true immortality rests with the soul. And speaking of youth – and the notion of invincibility and vanity that sometimes go with it – here are some images from last month. I’m sailing to Byzantium via Vellore in the great state of Tamilnadu in the southern part of India. The magnolia tree in the background, I believe, is sure to outlast me!
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
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.
