The Tower E-Book

W.b.yeats

• Herausgeber: Renard Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

First published in 1928, The Tower was Yeats's first collection published after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1923, and it is perhaps the major work that most cemented his reputation as one of the foremost literary figures of the twentieth century. The titular poem, 'The Tower', refers to Thoor Ballylee Castle, a Norman tower that Yeats purchased in 1917, and which formed the basis of the original cover design – evoked in the cover of this edition. The collection also includes some of his most inventive and profound work, and develops deep themes regarding life, love and myth. With explanatory notes, this edition seeks to bring the collection to a greater readership and to offer a more profound understanding of the great poet's work.

Leseprobe

The Tower(1928)

w.b. yeats

renard press

Renard Press Ltd

124 City Road

London EC1V 2NX

United Kingdom

[email protected]

020 8050 2928

www.renardpress.com

The Tower first published in 1928This edition first published by Renard Press Ltd in 2023

Edited text and Notes © Renard Press Ltd, 2023

Cover design by Will Dady after Thomas Sturge Moore

Renard Press is proud to be a climate positive publisher, removing more carbon from the air than we emit and planting a small forest. For more information see renardpress.com/eco.

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, used to train artificial intelligence systems or models, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the publisher.

EU Authorised Representative: Easy Access System Europe – Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia, [email protected].

contents

The Tower

Sailing To Byzantium

The Tower

Meditations in Time of Civil War

Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen

The Wheel

Youth and Age

The New Faces

A Prayer for My Son

Two Songs from a Play

Wisdom

Leda and the Swan

On a Picture of a Black Centaur by Edmund Dulac

Among School Children

Colonus’ Praise

The Hero, the Girl and the Fool

Owen Aherne and His Dancers

A Man Young and Old

The Three Monuments

From Oedipus at Colonus

The Gift of Harun Al-Rashid

All Souls’ Night

Notes75

the tower

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

Whatever is begotten, born and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

ii

An aged man is but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unlessSoul 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

Oh, sages standing in God’s holy fireAs 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 takeMy bodily form from any natural thing,But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamellingTo keep a drowsy emperor awake;Or set upon a golden bough to singTo lords and ladies of ByzantiumOf what is past, or passing, or to come.*

the tower*

i

What shall I do with this absurdity −Oh, heart, oh, troubled heart − this caricature,

Decrepit age that has been tied to meAs to a dog’s tail?

Never had I more

Excited, passionate, fantasticalImagination, nor an ear and eyeThat more expected the impossible −No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben’s back

And had the livelong summer day to spend.

It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,

Choose Plato and Plotinus* for a friend

Until imagination, ear and eye,

Can be content with argument and deal

In abstract things; or be derided byA sort of battered kettle at the heel.

ii

I pace upon the battlements and stareOn the foundations of a house, or whereTree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;

And send imagination forthUnder the day’s declining beam, and call

Images and memoriesFrom ruin or from ancient trees,For I would ask a question of them all.

Beyond that ridge lived Mrs French, and once