<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537295" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Tower</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">SAILING TO BYZANTIUM<br> I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">THAT is no country for old men. The young<br>In one another's arms, birds in the trees<br>-- Those dying generations -- at their song,<br>The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,<br>Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long<br>Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.<br>Caught in that sensual music all neglect<br>Monuments of unageing intellect.<br>An aged man is but a paltry thing,<br>A tattered coat upon a stick, unless<br>Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing<br>For every tatter in its mortal dress,<br>Nor is there singing school but studying<br>Monuments of its own magnificence;<br>And therefore I have sailed the seas and come<br>To the holy city of Byzantium.<br>O sages standing in God's holy fire<br>As in the gold mosaic of a wall,<br>Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,<br>And be the singing-masters of my soul.<br>Consume my heart away; sick with desire<br>And fastened to a dying animal<br>It knows not what it is; and gather me<br>Into the artifice of eternity.<br>Once out Of nature I shall never take<br>My bodily form from any natural thing,<br>But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make<br>Of hammered gold and gold enamelling<br>To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;<br>Or set upon a golden bough to sing<br>To lords and ladies of Byzantium<br>Of what is past, or passing, or to come.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">WHAT shall I do with this absurdity --<br>O heart, O troubled heart -- this caricature,<br>Decrepit age that has been tied to me<br>As to a dog's tail?<br>Never had I more<br>Excited, passionate, fantastical<br>Imagination, nor an ear and eye<br>That more expected the impossible --<br>No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,<br>Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back<br>And had the livelong summer day to spend.<br>It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,<br>Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend<br>Until imagination, ear and eye,<br>Can be content with argument and deal<br>In abstract things; or be derided by<br>A sort of battered kettle at the heel.<br>I pace upon the battlements and stare<br>On the foundations of a house, or where<br>Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;<br>And send imagination forth<br>Under the day's declining beam, and call<br>Images and memories<br>From ruin or from ancient trees,<br>For I would ask a question of them all.<br>Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once<br>When every silver candlestick or sconce<br>Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine.<br>A serving-man, that could divine<br>That most respected lady's every wish,<br>Ran and with the garden shears<br>Clipped an insolent farmer's ears<br>And brought them in a little covered dish.<br>Some few remembered still when I was young<br>A peasant girl commended by a Song,<br>Who'd lived somewhere upon that rocky place,<br>And praised the colour of her face,<br>And had the greater joy in praising her,<br>Remembering that, if walked she there,<br>Farmers jostled at the fair<br>So great a glory did the song confer.<br>And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes,<br>Or else by toasting her a score of times,<br>Rose from the table and declared it right<br>To test their fancy by their sight;<br>But they mistook the brightness of the moon<br>For the prosaic light of day --<br>Music had driven their wits astray --<br>And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.<br>Strange, but the man who made the song was blind;<br>Yet, now I have considered it, I find<br>That nothing strange; the tragedy began<br>With Homer that was a blind man,<br>And Helen has all living hearts betrayed.<br>O may the moon and sunlight seem<br>One inextricable beam,<br>For if I triumph I must make men mad.<br>And I myself created Hanrahan<br>And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn<br>From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages.<br>Caught by an old man's juggleries<br>He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro<br>And had but broken knees for hire<br>And horrible splendour of desire;<br>I thought it all out twenty years ago:<br>Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn;<br>And when that ancient ruffian's turn was on<br>He so bewitched the cards under his thumb<br>That all but the one card became<br>A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards,<br>And that he changed into a hare.<br>Hanrahan rose in frenzy there<br>And followed up those baying creatures towards --<br>O towards I have forgotten what -- enough!<br>I must recall a man that neither love<br>Nor music nor an enemy's clipped ear<br>Could, he was so harried, cheer;<br>A figure that has grown so fabulous<br>There's not a neighbour left to say<br>When he finished his dog's day:<br>An ancient bankrupt master of this house.<br>Before that ruin came, for centuries,<br>Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees<br>Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs,<br>And certain men-at-arms there were<br>Whose images, in the Great Memory stored,<br>Come with loud cry and panting breast<br>To break upon a sleeper's rest<br>While their great wooden dice beat on the board.<br>As I would question all, come all who can;<br>Come old, necessitous. half-mounted man;<br>And bring beauty's blind rambling celebrant;<br>The red man the juggler sent<br>Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs. French,<br>Gifted with so fine an ear;<br>The man drowned in a bog's mire,<br>When mocking Muses chose the country wench.<br>Did all old men and women, rich and poor,<br>Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door,<br>Whether in public or in secret rage<br>As I do now against old age?<br>But I have found an answer in those eyes<br>That are impatient to be gone;<br>Go therefore; but leave Hanrahan,<br>For I need all his mighty memories.<br>Old lecher with a love on every wind,<br>Bring up out of that deep considering mind<br>All that you have discovered in the grave,<br>For it is certain that you have<br>Reckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing<br>plunge, lured by a softening eye,<br>Or by a touch or a sigh,<br>Into the labyrinth of another's being;<br>Does the imagination dwell the most<br>Upon a woman won or woman lost.?<br>If on the lost, admit you turned aside<br>From a great labyrinth out of pride,<br>Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought<br>Or anything called conscience once;<br>And that if memory recur, the sun's<br>Under eclipse and the day blotted out.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III<br>It is time that I wrote my will;<br>I choose upstanding men<br>That climb the streams until<br>The fountain leap, and at dawn<br>Drop their cast at the side<br>Of dripping stone; I declare<br>They shall inherit my pride,<br>The pride of people that were<br>Bound neither to Cause nor to State.<br>Neither to slaves that were spat on,<br>Nor to the tyrants that spat,<br>The people of Burke and of Grattan<br>That gave, though free to refuse --<br>pride, like that of the morn,<br>When the headlong light is loose,<br>Or that of the fabulous horn,<br>Or that of the sudden shower<br>When all streams are dry,<br>Or that of the hour<br>When the swan must fix his eye<br>Upon a fading gleam,<br>Float out upon a long<br>Last reach of glittering stream<br>And there sing his last song.<br>And I declare my faith:<br>I mock plotinus' thought<br>And cry in plato's teeth,<br>Death and life were not<br>Till man made up the whole,<br>Made lock, stock and barrel<br>Out of his bitter soul,<br>Aye, sun and moon and star, all,<br>And further add to that<br>That, being dead, we rise,<br>Dream and so create<br>Translunar paradise.<br>I have prepared my peace<br>With learned Italian things<br>And the proud stones of Greece,<br>Poet's imaginings<br>And memories of love,<br>Memories of the words of women,<br>All those things whereof<br>Man makes a superhuman,<br>Mirror-resembling dream.<br>As at the loophole there<br>The daws chatter and scream,<br>And drop twigs layer upon layer.<br>When they have mounted up,<br>The mother bird will rest<br>On their hollow top,<br>And so warm her wild nest.<br>I leave both faith and pride<br>To young upstanding men<br>Climbing the mountain-side,<br>That under bursting dawn<br>They may drop a fly;<br>Being of that metal made<br>Till it was broken by<br>This sedentary trade.<br>Now shall I make my soul,<br>Compelling it to study<br>In a learned school<br>Till the wreck of body,<br>Slow decay of blood,<br>Testy delirium<br>Or dull decrepitude,<br>Or what worse evil come --<br>The death of friends, or death<br>Of every brilliant eye<br>That made a catch in the breath -- .<br>Seem but the clouds of the sky<br>When the horizon fades;<br>Or a bird's sleepy cry<br>Among the deepening shades.<br>THE TOWER<br> I<br>HDRWHAT shall I do with this absurdity --<br>O heart, O troubled heart -- this caricature,<br>Decrepit age that has been tied to me<br>As to a dog's tail?<br>Never had I more<br>Excited, passionate, fantastical<br>Imagination, nor an ear and eye<br>That more expected the impossible --<br>No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,<br>Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back<br>And had the livelong summer day to spend.<br>It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,<br>Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend<br>Until imagination, ear and eye,<br>Can be content with argument and deal<br>In abstract things; or be derided by<br>A sort of battered kettle at the heel.<br>I pace upon the battlements and stare<br>On the foundations of a house, or where<br>Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;<br>And send imagination forth<br>Under the day's declining beam, and call<br>Images and memories<br>From ruin or from ancient trees,<br>For I would ask a question of them all.<br>Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once<br>When every silver candlestick or sconce<br>Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine.<br>A serving-man, that could divine<br>That most respected lady's every wish,<br>Ran and with the garden shears<br>Clipped an insolent farmer's ears<br>And brought them in a little covered dish.<br>Some few remembered still when I was young<br>A peasant girl commended by a Song,<br>Who'd lived somewhere upon that rocky place,<br>And praised the colour of her face,<br>And had the greater joy in praising her,<br>Remembering that, if walked she there,<br>Farmers jostled at the fair<br>So great a glory did the song confer.<br>And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes,<br>Or else by toasting her a score of times,<br>Rose from the table and declared it right<br>To test their fancy by their sight;<br>But they mistook the brightness of the moon<br>For the prosaic light of day --<br>Music had driven their wits astray --<br>And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.<br>Strange, but the man who made the song was blind;<br>Yet, now I have considered it, I find<br>That nothing strange; the tragedy began<br>With Homer that was a blind man,<br>And Helen has all living hearts betrayed.<br>O may the moon and sunlight seem<br>One inextricable beam,<br>For if I triumph I must make men mad.<br>And I myself created Hanrahan<br>And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn<br>From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages.<br>Caught by an old man's juggleries<br>He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro<br>And had but broken knees for hire<br>And horrible splendour of desire;<br>I thought it all out twenty years ago:<br>Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn;<br>And when that ancient ruffian's turn was on<br>He so bewitched the cards under his thumb<br>That all but the one card became<br>A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards,<br>And that he changed into a hare.<br>Hanrahan rose in frenzy there<br>And followed up those baying creatures towards --<br>O towards I have forgotten what -- enough!<br>I must recall a man that neither love<br>Nor music nor an enemy's clipped ear<br>Could, he was so harried, cheer;<br>A figure that has grown so fabulous<br>There's not a neighbour left to say<br>When he finished his dog's day:<br>An ancient bankrupt master of this house.<br>Before that ruin came, for centuries,<br>Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees<br>Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs,<br>And certain men-at-arms there were<br>Whose images, in the Great Memory stored,<br>Come with loud cry and panting breast<br>To break upon a sleeper's rest<br>While their great wooden dice beat on the board.<br>As I would question all, come all who can;<br>Come old, necessitous. half-mounted man;<br>And bring beauty's blind rambling celebrant;<br>The red man the juggler sent<br>Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs. French,<br>Gifted with so fine an ear;<br>The man drowned in a bog's mire,<br>When mocking Muses chose the country wench.<br>Did all old men and women, rich and poor,<br>Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door,<br>Whether in public or in secret rage<br>As I do now against old age?<br>But I have found an answer in those eyes<br>That are impatient to be gone;<br>Go therefore; but leave Hanrahan,<br>For I need all his mighty memories.<br>Old lecher with a love on every wind,<br>Bring up out of that deep considering mind<br>All that you have discovered in the grave,<br>For it is certain that you have<br>Reckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing<br>plunge, lured by a softening eye,<br>Or by a touch or a sigh,<br>Into the labyrinth of another's being;<br>Does the imagination dwell the most<br>Upon a woman won or woman lost.?<br>If on the lost, admit you turned aside<br>From a great labyrinth out of pride,<br>Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought<br>Or anything called conscience once;<br>And that if memory recur, the sun's<br>Under eclipse and the day blotted out.<br>III<br>It is time that I wrote my will;<br>I choose upstanding men<br>That climb the streams until<br>The fountain leap, and at dawn<br>Drop their cast at the side<br>Of dripping stone; I declare<br>They shall inherit my pride,<br>The pride of people that were<br>Bound neither to Cause nor to State.<br>Neither to slaves that were spat on,<br>Nor to the tyrants that spat,<br>The people of Burke and of Grattan<br>That gave, though free to refuse --<br>pride, like that of the morn,<br>When the headlong light is loose,<br>Or that of the fabulous horn,<br>Or that of the sudden shower<br>When all streams are dry,<br>Or that of the hour<br>When the swan must fix his eye<br>Upon a fading gleam,<br>Float out upon a long<br>Last reach of glittering stream<br>And there sing his last song.<br>And I declare my faith:<br>I mock plotinus' thought<br>And cry in plato's teeth,<br>Death and life were not<br>Till man made up the whole,<br>Made lock, stock and barrel<br>Out of his bitter soul,<br>Aye, sun and moon and star, all,<br>And further add to that<br>That, being dead, we rise,<br>Dream and so create<br>Translunar paradise.<br>I have prepared my peace<br>With learned Italian things<br>And the proud stones of Greece,<br>Poet's imaginings<br>And memories of love,<br>Memories of the words of women,<br>All those things whereof<br>Man makes a superhuman,<br>Mirror-resembling dream.<br>As at the loophole there<br>The daws chatter and scream,<br>And drop twigs layer upon layer.<br>When they have mounted up,<br>The mother bird will rest<br>On their hollow top,<br>And so warm her wild nest.<br>I leave both faith and pride<br>To young upstanding men<br>Climbing the mountain-side,<br>That under bursting dawn<br>They may drop a fly;<br>Being of that metal made<br>Till it was broken by<br>This sedentary trade.<br>Now shall I make my soul,<br>Compelling it to study<br>In a learned school<br>Till the wreck of body,<br>Slow decay of blood,<br>Testy delirium<br>Or dull decrepitude,<br>Or what worse evil come --<br>The death of friends, or death<br>Of every brilliant eye<br>That made a catch in the breath -- .<br>Seem but the clouds of the sky<br>When the horizon fades;<br>Or a bird's sleepy cry<br>Among the deepening shades.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Butler+Yeats">William Butler Yeats</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537295" data-title="The Tower de William Butler Yeats" data-description="SAILING TO BYZANTIUM I 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 Wh..."></div> </div> </div>

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