Yeats 의 시 "The Tower" (부분)

            The Tower

        BY William Butler Yeats

 

                             

                        I

 

What shall I do with this absurdity —

O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature,

Decrepit age that has been tied to me

As to a dog's tail?

                                 Never had I more

Excited, passionate, fantastical

Imagination, nor an ear and eye

That 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 by

A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

 

 

              II (first stanza)

 

I pace upon the battlements and stare

On the foundations of a house, or where

Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;

And send imagination forth

Under the day's declining beam, and call

Images and memories

From ruin or from ancient trees,

For I would ask a question of them all.

 

 

            III (last stanza)

 

Now shall I make my soul,

Compelling it to study

In a learned school

Till the wreck of body,

Slow decay of blood,

Testy delirium

Or dull decrepitude,

Or what worse evil come –

The death of friends, or death

Of every brilliant eye

That made a catch in the breath – 

Seem but the clouds of the sky 

When the horizon fades;

Or a bird's sleepy cry 

Among the deepening shades.

 

 

▶ Dan Barry, "The Tower That Enchanted Yeats"

 

사진(위, 아래) : Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society 웹사이트에서

 

 

 

Ben Bulben