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,
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Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging 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
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III
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O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
.
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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
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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.
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In his memorial poem, “On the Death of W.B. Yeats,” W.H Auden wrote:
“The death of the poet was kept from his poems…
...[H]e became his admirers.”
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
"A Brief History of Robot Birds,"Smithsonian magazine.
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More Literary Diaries on DKos:
Classic Poetry Group
FreeWriters
Readers and Book Lovers (with full schedule of literary diaries)