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Sailing to Byzantium　　William Butler Yeats

　　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 unageing 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.