Sailing to Byzantium, by 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.