William Butler Yeats

  I

     That is no country for old men. The young
     In one another's ams, 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 unageing intellect.

      II

     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.

  III

     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.

     IV

     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.