Monday, March 2, 2009

Sailing to Byzantium

AJ : i realy feel in peace with myself right now
sj : That is great
sj : I am happy for you
AJ : thank you
sj : You are welcome
sj : Always
AJ : I was coming from work... and I was thinking that in case I loose my job because of this financial crisis I wouldn't have anything to sustain myself here and I would have to go home... for a moment I felt some kind of fear even if this doesn't seem very possible to happend at the moment, but then I thought that if I go home I would go to a monastery to live there for maybe two months... and at that moment I felt like being there, and since then I feel as if I've been to the church today
sj: This is great
sj: Spiritually moving to another place
sj: I love this
sj : There is a poem depicting this
sj : for Yeats
AJ : I didn't have this feeling since I was there...
AJ : until today
sj : It is called 'Sailing to Byzantium"
sj : Read it
AJ : and the orthodox faith has it's roots in the Byzantium
sj: I know
AJ : this makes me even more happy
sj : this is why I am telling you
AJ : thank you very much
sj : You are most welcome my friend

And here's the poem:


Sailing to Byzantium

by 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 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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