Sailing to Byzantium

Christ Pantocrator, Hagia Sophia

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.

-- W.B. Yeats

Because we take all our formal education when young, the most important things in our cultural heritage never get properly studied. We learn by and large only what is important to young people; we do not learn what is important to the old.

Now that we are supposedly living longer, and have the institution of retirement, wouldn’t it make sense to create courses for the old in what is most valuable to them in the accumulated thought of the ages? After all, they now have the time to study and to reflect. Now is the time for the Humanities!

In fact, in many traditions—the Jewish, the Hindu—you are not supposed to look at the deeper philosophical questions until you are at least 40.