Sailing to Byzantium 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 bumble-bees, 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, burn in there, 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 gathers me Into the artifice of eternity.
Just such a thing as I have known of old For the first time and ever of all That I have spoken and of all Which is of the watching eyes that never fail.
And at midnight the great mind awakes, And the city of gold beholds the delicate walls, Be etched by the absorbed tortoise shell Life glittering like stars and silver wings, As all the perennial cities bow.
The eyes of the priests and the voices of the tongues Whose breaches are closed to those whom we must greet;
All the birds I only know but not forget, As the woven words weave over and over.
What shall I leave for the young, For those who roll on earth where grape-vines play, Where hearts beat back and forth like wings; These, how can they speak, other than with joy? For the young and the old are both the same. They give and gather in the same place, with old history charged in them to the stories.
While time goes on repeating the worn tale, They tumble with surprise, as they are swept away As I go on early to the holy places, With delicate cities, old and full of dreams.
And we both, the young and the old men, Between rivers and the sleeping fields, we leave this path, Wandering on the ruffled trees of wreckage,
Where time comes back but never fails to leave.
- William Butler Yeats