THE unpurged images of day recede; <br />The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; <br />Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song <br />After great cathedral gong; <br />A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains <br />All that man is, <br />All mere complexities, <br />The fury and the mire of human veins. <br />Before me floats an image, man or shade, <br />Shade more than man, more image than a shade; <br />For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth <br />May unwind the winding path; <br />A mouth that has no moisture and no breath <br />Breathless mouths may summon; <br />I hail the superhuman; <br />I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. <br />Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, <br />More miraclc than bird or handiwork, <br />Planted on the star-lit golden bough, <br />Can like the cocks of Hades crow, <br />Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud <br />In glory of changeless metal <br />Common bird or petal <br />And all complexities of mire or blood. <br />At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit <br />Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, <br />Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, <br />Where blood-begotten spirits come <br />And all complexities of fury leave, <br />Dying into a dance, <br />An agony of trance, <br />An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. <br />Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, <br />Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood. <br />The golden smithies of the Emperor! <br />Marbles of the dancing floor <br />Break bitter furies of complexity, <br />Those images that yet <br />Fresh images beget, <br />That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/byzantium/
