Byzantium & Cathay
A LITTLE CLUSTER OF ASSOCIATIONS THAT I HOLD IN FOND SENTIMENT FROM A TIME WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNGER THAN TODAY
D E S I G N E R L U D E
Pendant: Caravel - Late 16th century, Italy
(Gold, rubies, emeralds, pearls and enamel)
Caravel 2
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.
Album: No Ruinous Feud
Year: 1973
Through red forests that lean against the hills
I wandered with my heart in my hand
My cloak wound down to the shores of Cathay
Where the gold lay scattered on the sand
Night was young back before the dawn
Casting kisses at the day
Shipping the sea bestriding the earth
Down before Cathay.
The admirable deeds of Khubla Khan
we admired from the deck
Of our cedarwood ship
Observing the domes that prance from Mandalay
Where the dogs they sleep all the day
We gazed upon the Towers of Tyre
That rose coarse and spicey in the air
But we sailed up the coast to sidon
Where the gazes are so rare
Where the gazes are so rare
The ship shone its lamp across the silent air
That swirled before Cathay
And there on the sand that courts the amber sea
Our fair bodies we cast away
Night was young back before the dawn
Casting kisses at the day
Sipping the sea bestriing the earth
Down before Cathay.
jp 02-07-13