"Christopher Priest - The Affirmation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

THE AFFIRMATION
by Christopher Priest



Extract from "Sailing to Byzantium," from W. B. Yeats, Collected Poems,
reprinted with permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., copyright 1928 by
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1956 by Georgie Yeats; and of M. B.
Yeats, Anne Yeats, and Macmillan London Ltd.

Copyright 1981 Christopher Priest

ISBN 0-684-16957-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.




To M.L. and L.M.




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.

W. B. YEATS
"Sailing to Byzantium"




THE AFFIRMATION