The Tower E-Book

W.b.yeats

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

Seitenzahl: 64

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

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London EC1V 2NX

United Kingdom

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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.

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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

When every silver candlestick or sconceLit up the dark mahogany and the wine.A serving man that could divine

That most respected lady’s every wish

Ran and with the garden shearsClipped an insolent farmer’s earsAnd brought them in a little covered dish.

Some few remembered still when I was young

A peasant girl commended by a song,Who’d lived somewhere upon that rocky place,

And praised the colour of her face,

And had the greater joy in praising her,

Remembering that, if walked she there,

Farmers jostled at the fairSo great a glory did the song confer.

And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes,

Or else by toasting her a score of times,Rose from the table and declared it rightTo test their fancy by their sight;

But they mistook the brightness of the moonFor the prosaic light of day −Music had driven their wits astray −And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.

Strange, but the man who made the song was blind;

Yet, now I have considered it, I findThat nothing strange; the tragedy beganWith Homer that was a blind man,

And Helen has all living hearts betrayed.*

Oh, may the moon and sunlight seem

One inextricable beam,For if I triumph I must make men mad.

And I myself created Hanrahan*And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn

From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages.

Caught by an old man’s juggleriesHe stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and froAnd had but broken knees for hireAnd horrible splendour of desire;I thought it all out twenty years ago:

Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn;*

And when that ancient ruffian’s turn was on

He so bewitched the cards under his thumb

That all but the one card became

A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards,And that he changed into a hare.Hanrahan rose in frenzy thereAnd followed up those baying creatures towards—

Oh, towards I have forgotten what − enough!

I must recall a man that neither loveNor music nor an enemy’s clipped ear

Could, he was so harried, cheer;

A figure that has grown so fabulous

There’s not a neighbour left to sayWhen he finished his dog’s day:An ancient bankrupt master of this house.

Before that ruin came, for centuries,Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees

Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs,And certain men-at-arms there wereWhose images, in the Great Memory stored,

Come with loud cry and panting breastTo break upon a sleeper’s restWhile their great wooden dice beat on the board.

As I would question all, come all who can;

Come old, necessitous, half-mounted man;

And bring beauty’s blind rambling celebrant;

The red man the juggler sent

Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs French,

Gifted with so fine an ear;The man drowned in a bog’s mire,When mocking Muses chose the country wench.

Did all old men and women, rich and poor,

Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door,

Whether in public or in secret rage

As I do now against old age?But I have found an answer in those eyes

That are impatient to be gone;Go, therefore; but leave Hanrahan,For I need all his mighty memories.

Old lecher with a love on every wind,

Bring up out of that deep considering mind

All that you have discovered in the grave,

For it is certain that you haveReckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing

Plunge, lured by a softening eye,Or by a touch or a sigh,Into the labyrinth of another’s being;

Does the imagination dwell the mostUpon a woman won or woman lost?If on the lost, admit you turned asideFrom a great labyrinth out of pride,

Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought

Or anything called conscience once;

And that if memory recur, the sun’s

Under eclipse and the day blotted out.*

iii