I <br />That is no country for old men. The young <br />In one another's arms, birds in the trees <br />---Those dying generations---at their song, <br />The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, <br />Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long <br />Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. <br />Caught in that sensual music all neglect <br />Monuments of unaging intellect. <br /> <br /> II <br />An aged man is but a paltry thing, <br />A tattered coat upon a stick, unless <br />Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing <br />For every tatter in its mortal dress, <br />Nor is there singing school but studying <br />Monuments of its own magnificence; <br />And therefore I have sailed the seas and come <br />To the holy city of Byzantium. <br /> <br /> III <br />O sages standing in God's holy fire <br />As in the gold mosaic of a wall, <br />Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, <br />And be the singing-masters of my soul. <br />Consume my heart away; sick with desire <br />And fastened to a dying animal <br />It knows not what it is; and gather me <br />Into the artifice of eternity. <br /> <br /> IV <br />Once out of nature I shall never take <br />My bodily form from any natural thing, <br />But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make <br />Of hammered gold and gold enamelling <br />To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; <br />Or set upon a golden bough to sing <br />To lords and ladies of Byzantium <br />Of what is past, or passing, or to come.<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sailing-to-byzantium/
