| 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 | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| To lords and ladies of Byzantium | |
| Of what is past, or passing, or to come. | |