ABSTRACT
I wrote the poem last spring; the first thing I wrote after my illness. Letter to T. Sturge Moore.
'1 think if 1 could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where 1 chose, 1 would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato. 1 think 1 could find in some little wine shop some philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the supernatural descending nearer to him than to Plotinus even, for the pride of his delicate skill would make what was an instrument of power to Princes and Clerics and a murderous madness in the mob, show as a lovely flexible presence like that of a perfect human body.'l
THE LONELY TOWER
-with me on the Anglo-Irish background of the Big House and its "mythology'; as well as to the Lecturers of the past four years at the Y eats International Summer School at Sligo -especially to Marion Witt, Myles Dillon and Frank O'Connor - and to the members of the Advanced Seminar Group at those meetings. I owe a particular debt to Francis Warner, for reading this edition both in script and in proof. It is possible that I have inadvertently taken ideas from others which I have not acknowledged; if so, I ask their pardon.
