Thanks, DWill.

I've been wanting to post this one, and actually I think it could go on the verbal firepower thread, too. Like any literature, poetry is also good for letting us in on feelings or notions that are not our own, that may be in fact foreign to us until the poet takes us in. "Sailing to Byzantium" is like that for me. I am getting on in years, but I don't feel like an aged man. I certainly have never wished to remove myself from nature and enter the timeless world of art. But I identify with these feelings when I read the poem. Beyond that, I think that here Yeats is at the top of his form. He shows a Shakespeare-like ability to compress language and bend it to his will. It has the bold, famous declarative opening sentence, and it never lets up from there. It was a tough choice between this and his "The Circus Animals' Desertion."

Sailing to Byzantium

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.

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.

DWill

One of my favorites is Keats' "Ode on Melancholy"


Ode on Melancholy
by John Keats

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty -Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine:
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

The thing I love about this poem is that it reminds us of the transitory nature of life and the illusiveness of happiness. It also lets us know that it is ok (even preferable) to embrace melancholy and not avoid it. This is because the more fully one experiences melancholy, the more intensley one can enjoy the next shortlived moment of happiness that comes along.

Jeremy wrote:

The thing I love about this poem is that it reminds us of the transitory nature of life and the elusiveness of happiness. It also lets us know that it is ok (even preferable) to embrace melancholy and not avoid it. This is because the more fully one experiences melancholy, the more intensely one can enjoy the next shortlived moment of happiness that comes along.

I agree completely. I would even venture a step further along this path. Emotional life is a so much more than just melancholy and joy. The more fully we allow ourselves to experience (I do not mean act on or act out) each of the subtle and varied emotions that we pass through in a day, the richer and more nuanced life becomes.

It is important to recognize that all emotion is fleeting, melancholy as well as joy. And I wouldn't say that melancholy is necessarily longer lived than joy. I think we spend a lot of energy seeking it and fixate on trying to be happy, that all too often miss when we are.

I have alway really respected this poem by Robert Frost, to me it is about choosing value in life, and accepting that you cannot live through every option. It also tells that following conventional wisdom is not the only option. The author does not tell weather the difference has been for the better or not, I like to think that it has been for the better.

In light of this poem I always try to find the road less travelled.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN by Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

Grim,
Nice choice of poems. Frost is one of my favorite poets and for sure that is a favorite poem. I always think of this poem in conjunction with Thoreau's line from Walden, "follow your own drummer."

I think the last line -
And that has made all the difference
clues the reading in that it was a worth while and therefore positive choice.

Nice to have you aboard! I hope you will keep posting on the poetry threads.

Saffron

Hiya, this is my first post on this site.

I love that William Carlos Williams poem too. But after I read Kenneth Koch's parody of it, I'll never think of it the same way again.

I'm posting Koch's poem just in case you're not familiar with it:

"Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams"

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Hello Rose, welcome to Booktalk!

Would you like to tell us a little about yourself by writing an introduction in the "Introduce Yourself" threads?

Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine:

I might have come around to posting a Keats poem eventually, because I love a lot of his poems. Interestingly, I would not have thought of "Ode to Melalancholy," so I'm really glad it's one of your favorites--lets me see it again. (Incidentally, the biography John Keats, by Walter Jackson Bate, is one of the best books I've ever read. Keats in life was fully as adimrable as his poems. That he accomplished so much in just a few years before dying at age 26 seems miraculous.)
I like the way Keats incorporates melancholy into kind of an organic process, not the flip side of joy but a sort of ally of it. I like the suggestion that experiencing true melancholy (not by calling up the conventional symbols of it in stanza 1) takes a kind of bold deliberation and discrimination ("whose strenuous tongue/Can burst joys grape against his palate fine.")

DWill

[quote="Grim"]
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I