Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
I’ve been bolstering my list by reading several books of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poems, and I’ve also started A Poem a Day, edited by Karen McCosker and Nicholas Albery. I’m trying to read 10-20 (or even a month’s worth) of poems each day so I finish them before the library due date. I’m reserving my method of posting a poem by an author I’ve only posted once for when I’m stuck and have nothing in my file.
So far I’ve read January’s poems in A Poem a Day, and out of those 31 poems, I’ve read/posted 6 of them previously. So that gave me new fodder! I’ve posted quite a few poems by Yeats before, but I came across two that I haven’t read before and loved them, which isn’t surprising.
Sailing to Byzantium
By William Butler Yeats
I
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.
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.
