Listening to people reading 235a close replication of the reported discourse may seem desirable. The usefulness
of recognizing Stage 2 engagement as an option for the reader is more
apparent when we look at poems in which conversation is less clearly suggested.
A possible reading of the first stanza of Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ is:
//o that is NO country //o for OLD men //o the YOUNG //
//o in ONE another’s ARMS //o BIRDS //o in the TREES //
//o those DYing generAtions //o at their SONG //
//o the SALmon falls //o the MACKerel crowded SEAS //
//o FISH //o FLESH //o and FOWL //o commend ALL summer LONG //
//o whatEVer is beGOTten //o BORN //o and DIES //
//o CAUGHT in the sensual MUsic //p ALL neGLECT //
//o MONuments of unageing INtellect //It is no part of my purpose to comment on the merits of such a reading. It
seems likely, in fact, to come more closely to Yeats’s own declared views
about how his work should be read than would one which used the text as
a basis for constructing a (in this case one-sided) conversation, in the way
I have suggested can be done with Auden’s poem. There are greater difficulties
in hearing some of Yeats’s lines as if they were communication directed
towards a hearer than was the case with Auden. Nevertheless, we find that
the reading depends, in an important sense, on their having the potentiality
to be so directed. If we try to express the thought of the last two lines
communicatively, we are likely to say:
//r CAUGHT in the sensual MUsic //p ALL neGLECT //r MONuments of
unageing INtellect //or, to paraphrase very crudely
//r preOCCupied with the business of procreAtion //p Everyone igNORES
//r the THINGS that don’t CHANGE //We can best explain the non-prominent treatment of sensual and unageing
in both versions by saying that after the detailed references earlier in the
poem no epithet incompatible with sensual could apply, and that whatever
is opposed in the argument to ‘whatever is begotten, born and dies’ will be
ageless. Earlier lines are in a similar relationship to possible communicative
utterances, for instance:
//p that is NO country //r for OLD men //r (where) the YOUNG //r (are)
in ONE another’s ARMS //The things then referred to as typifying ‘that country’ (birds, etc.) might
then be presented with a referring tone unit for each, followed by:
//r FISH //r FLESH //r and FOWL //p commend ALL summer LONG /
/p whatEVer is beGOTTen //p BORN //p and DIES //