January 7, 2012: Difference between revisions
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{{Journal-Top}}<div style="padding-top: 30px;"> | {{Journal-Top}}<div style="padding-top: 30px;"> | ||
{{Center|{{Large|Sailing to Byzantium}}<br /> | {{Center|{{Large|Sailing to Byzantium}}{{refn|Yeats wrote in ''A Vision'': “I think that if I could be given a month of antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in [[w:Byzantium|Byzantium]] (Istanbul today) a little before [[w:Justinian I|Justinian]] opened St. Sophia and closed the [[w:Academy of Plato|Academy of Plato]]. . . . I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one, that architects and artificers . . . spoke to the multitude in gold and silver. The painter, the mosaic worker, the worker in gold and silver, the illuminator of sacred books were almost impersonal, almost perhaps without the consciousness of individual design, absorbed in their subject matter and that the vision of a whole people.”}}<br /> | ||
By: '''[[w:W. B. Yeats|W. B. Yeats]]''' ([[w:Sailing to Byzantium|1927]]) }} | By: '''[[w:W. B. Yeats|W. B. Yeats]]''' ([[w:Sailing to Byzantium|1927]]) }} | ||
<div style="display: flex; justify-content: center; padding: 25px 0 25px 0;"> | <div style="display: flex; justify-content: center; padding: 25px 0 25px 0;"> | ||
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O sages standing in God’s holy fire | O sages standing in God’s holy fire | ||
As in the gold mosaic of a wall, | As in the gold mosaic of a wall, | ||
Come from the holy fire, {{H:title|A reel or spool on which something is wound.|perne}} in a {{H:title| | Come from the holy fire, {{H:title|A reel or spool on which something is wound.|perne}} in a {{H:title|A vortex. Yeats associated a gyre with the spinning of fate.|gyre}}, | ||
And be the singing-masters of my soul. {{ln|20}} | And be the singing-masters of my soul. {{ln|20}} | ||
Consume my heart away; sick with desire | Consume my heart away; sick with desire | ||
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</poem> | </poem> | ||
|}</div> | |}</div> | ||
{{Rlnk|url=https://www.reddit.com/r/LitWiki/comments/tv8v2n/yeats_sailing_to_byzantium/}} | |||
{{Notes}} | {{Notes}} | ||
Revision as of 08:17, 3 April 2022
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1 That is no country for old men. The young 2 An aged man is but a paltry thing, 3 O sages standing in God’s holy fire 4 Once out of nature I shall never take 25 |
notes
- ↑ Yeats wrote in A Vision: “I think that if I could be given a month of antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium (Istanbul today) a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato. . . . I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one, that architects and artificers . . . spoke to the multitude in gold and silver. The painter, the mosaic worker, the worker in gold and silver, the illuminator of sacred books were almost impersonal, almost perhaps without the consciousness of individual design, absorbed in their subject matter and that the vision of a whole people.”
- ↑ The poet William Blake saw his brother’s soul rising to Heaven, “clapping his hands for joy.”
- ↑ I have read somewhere that the Emperor’s palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang. [Yeats’ note.]
