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. —William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” III. Reading the Bible recently, the thick New English Oxford study edition I’ve toted around for …