Poem of the Week September 20

By: Karen Hill   Sep 20, 2004

Elaine P. Maimon

Age: Forever young; this poem is, after all, about immortality

Occupation: Chancellor, University of Alaska Anchorage; Professor of English

I have many favorite poems, but the following choice, W.B. Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” is a poem that I have loved for a long time because of its music and its meaning.

Perhaps, the poem has special significance in this land of “salmon-falls.”

Sailing to Byzantium  William Butler 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 unaging 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 enameling

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.