Thursday 8 March 2012

No Country...

 Make a Page on the theme "No Country for Old Men." 
I chose to make one on the poem "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats.

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.

I decided to do a 4 page spread, each one different artwork, style and composition with its subject reflecting one of the 4 different stanzas.  This seemed to bog me down for such a long time,  This is the height of thematic multi-page journal pages.  Although two years later I will go on to do much larger journal projects, but I am getting ahead of myself.

I loved the 4th page of this project, not just for how it related to the poem but for the backgrounds and the pen and ink architectural drawings.  I was so happy with it that I signed it, another first.

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