Sailing To
Byzantium
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.
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.
