The subject of sailing seems to be in the air for me this week. One of my kindergarten friends launched his year long expedition to sail the Pacific from Hawaii-Tahiti-to New Zealand and beyond.
And yesterday I was so moved to read/watch the story of Jessica Watson in Aaron’s Inspiration Information Post — I thought I’d find a poem about sailing.
Of course the first thing that came to mind was Tennyson’s “Ulysses”… but I’ve already posted that before. I found several great ones by Walt Whitman. But then I remembered William Butler Yeats “Sailing to Byzantium” — which may not be so much about literal sailing after all. But what a treat to hear him read his poem:
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
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.
II
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.
III
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.
IV
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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