Sailing to Byzantium – William Butler Yeats Poem

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  1. That is no country for old men. The young
  2. In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
  3. —Those dying generations—at their song,
  4. The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
  5. Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
  6. Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
  7. Caught in that sensual music all neglect
  8. Monuments of unageing intellect.
  9. An aged man is but a paltry thing,
  10. A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
  11. Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
  12. For every tatter in its mortal dress,
  13. Nor is there singing school but studying
  14. Monuments of its own magnificence;
  15. And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
  16. To the holy city of Byzantium.
  17. O sages standing in God’s holy fire
  18. As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
  19. Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
  20. And be the singing-masters of my soul.
  21. Consume my heart away; sick with desire
  22. And fastened to a dying animal
  23. It knows not what it is; and gather me
  24. Into the artifice of eternity.
  25. Once out of nature I shall never take
  26. My bodily form from any natural thing,
  27. But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
  28. Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
  29. To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
  30. Or set upon a golden bough to sing
  31. To lords and ladies of Byzantium
  32. Of what is past, or passing, or to come.