THE TOWER
 
 SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
  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.
 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.
 
 WHAT shall I do with this absurdity –
 O heart, O troubled heart – this caricature,
 Decrepit age that has been tied to me
 As to a dog's tail?
 Never had I more
 Excited, passionate, fantastical
 Imagination, nor an ear and eye
 That more expected the impossible –
 No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
 Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
 And had the livelong summer day to spend.
 It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,
 Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
 Until imagination, ear and eye,
 Can be content with argument and deal
 In abstract things; or be derided by
 A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
 I pace upon the battlements and stare
 On the foundations of a house, or where
 Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;
 And send imagination forth
 Under the day's declining beam, and call
 Images and memories
 From ruin or from ancient trees,
 For I would ask a question of them all.
 Beyond that ridge lived Mrs.  French, and once
 When every silver candlestick or sconce
 Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine.
 A serving-man, that could divine
 That most respected lady's every wish,
 Ran and with the garden shears
 Clipped an insolent farmer's ears
 And brought them in a little covered dish.
 Some few remembered still when I was young
 A peasant girl commended by a Song,
 Who'd lived somewhere upon that rocky place,
 And praised the colour of her face,
 And had the greater joy in praising her,
 Remembering that, if walked she there,
 Farmers jostled at the fair
 So great a glory did the song confer.
 And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes,
 Or else by toasting her a score of times,
 Rose from the table and declared it right
 To test their fancy by their sight;
 But they mistook the brightness of the moon
 For the prosaic light of day –
 Music had driven their wits astray –
 And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.
 Strange, but the man who made the song was blind;
 Yet, now I have considered it, I find
 That nothing strange; the tragedy began
 With Homer that was a blind man,
 And Helen has all living hearts betrayed.
 O may the moon and sunlight seem
 One inextricable beam,
 For if I triumph I must make men mad.
 And I myself created Hanrahan
 And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn
 From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages.
 Caught by an old man's juggleries
 He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro
 And had but broken knees for hire
 And horrible splendour of desire;
 I thought it all out twenty years ago:
 Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn;
 And when that ancient ruffian's turn was on
 He so bewitched the cards under his thumb
 That all but the one card became
 A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards,
 And that he changed into a hare.
 Hanrahan rose in frenzy there
 And followed up those baying creatures towards –
 O towards I have forgotten what – enough!
 I must recall a man that neither love
 Nor music nor an enemy's clipped ear
 Could, he was so harried, cheer;
 A figure that has grown so fabulous
 There's not a neighbour left to say
 When he finished his dog's day:
 An ancient bankrupt master of this house.
 Before that ruin came, for centuries,
 Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees
 Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs,
 And certain men-at-arms there were
 Whose images, in the Great Memory stored,
 Come with loud cry and panting breast
 To break upon a sleeper's rest
 While their great wooden dice beat on the board.
 As I would question all, come all who can;
 Come old, necessitous.  half-mounted man;
 And bring beauty's blind rambling celebrant;
 The red man the juggler sent
 Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs.  French,
 Gifted with so fine an ear;
 The man drowned in a bog's mire,
 When mocking Muses chose the country wench.
 Did all old men and women, rich and poor,
 Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door,
 Whether in public or in secret rage
 As I do now against old age?
 But I have found an answer in those eyes
 That are impatient to be gone;
 Go therefore; but leave Hanrahan,
 For I need all his mighty memories.
 Old lecher with a love on every wind,
 Bring up out of that deep considering mind
 All that you have discovered in the grave,
 For it is certain that you have
 Reckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing
 plunge, lured by a softening eye,
 Or by a touch or a sigh,
 Into the labyrinth of another's being;
 Does the imagination dwell the most
 Upon a woman won or woman lost.?
 If on the lost, admit you turned aside
 From a great labyrinth out of pride,
 Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought
 Or anything called conscience once;
 And that if memory recur, the sun's
 Under eclipse and the day blotted out.
 
 III
 It is time that I wrote my will;
 I choose upstanding men
 That climb the streams until
 The fountain leap, and at dawn
 Drop their cast at the side
 Of dripping stone; I declare
 They shall inherit my pride,
 The pride of people that were
 Bound neither to Cause nor to State.
 Neither to slaves that were spat on,
 Nor to the tyrants that spat,
 The people of Burke and of Grattan
 That gave, though free to refuse –
 pride, like that of the morn,
 When the headlong light is loose,
 Or that of the fabulous horn,
 Or that of the sudden shower
 When all streams are dry,
 Or that of the hour
 When the swan must fix his eye
 Upon a fading gleam,
 Float out upon a long
 Last reach of glittering stream
 And there sing his last song.
 And I declare my faith:
 I mock plotinus' thought
 And cry in plato's teeth,
 Death and life were not
 Till man made up the whole,
 Made lock, stock and barrel
 Out of his bitter soul,
 Aye, sun and moon and star, all,
 And further add to that
 That, being dead, we rise,
 Dream and so create
 Translunar paradise.
 I have prepared my peace
 With learned Italian things
 And the proud stones of Greece,
 Poet's imaginings
 And memories of love,
 Memories of the words of women,
 All those things whereof
 Man makes a superhuman,
 Mirror-resembling dream.
 As at the loophole there
 The daws chatter and scream,
 And drop twigs layer upon layer.
 When they have mounted up,
 The mother bird will rest
 On their hollow top,
 And so warm her wild nest.
 I leave both faith and pride
 To young upstanding men
 Climbing the mountain-side,
 That under bursting dawn
 They may drop a fly;
 Being of that metal made
 Till it was broken by
 This sedentary trade.
 Now shall I make my soul,
 Compelling it to study
 In a learned school
 Till the wreck of body,
 Slow decay of blood,
 Testy delirium
 Or dull decrepitude,
 Or what worse evil come –
 The death of friends, or death
 Of every brilliant eye
 That made a catch in the breath – .
 Seem but the clouds of the sky
 When the horizon fades;
 Or a bird's sleepy cry
 Among the deepening shades.
 THE TOWER
  I
 HDRWHAT shall I do with this absurdity –
 O heart, O troubled heart – this caricature,
 Decrepit age that has been tied to me
 As to a dog's tail?
 Never had I more
 Excited, passionate, fantastical
 Imagination, nor an ear and eye
 That more expected the impossible –
 No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
 Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
 And had the livelong summer day to spend.
 It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,
 Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
 Until imagination, ear and eye,
 Can be content with argument and deal
 In abstract things; or be derided by
 A sort of battered kettle at the heel.
 I pace upon the battlements and stare
 On the foundations of a house, or where
 Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;
 And send imagination forth
 Under the day's declining beam, and call
 Images and memories
 From ruin or from ancient trees,
 For I would ask a question of them all.
 Beyond that ridge lived Mrs.  French, and once
 When every silver candlestick or sconce
 Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine.
 A serving-man, that could divine
 That most respected lady's every wish,
 Ran and with the garden shears
 Clipped an insolent farmer's ears
 And brought them in a little covered dish.
 Some few remembered still when I was young
 A peasant girl commended by a Song,
 Who'd lived somewhere upon that rocky place,
 And praised the colour of her face,
 And had the greater joy in praising her,
 Remembering that, if walked she there,
 Farmers jostled at the fair
 So great a glory did the song confer.
 And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes,
 Or else by toasting her a score of times,
 Rose from the table and declared it right
 To test their fancy by their sight;
 But they mistook the brightness of the moon
 For the prosaic light of day –
 Music had driven their wits astray –
 And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.
 Strange, but the man who made the song was blind;
 Yet, now I have considered it, I find
 That nothing strange; the tragedy began
 With Homer that was a blind man,
 And Helen has all living hearts betrayed.
 O may the moon and sunlight seem
 One inextricable beam,
 For if I triumph I must make men mad.
 And I myself created Hanrahan
 And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn
 From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages.
 Caught by an old man's juggleries
 He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro
 And had but broken knees for hire
 And horrible splendour of desire;
 I thought it all out twenty years ago:
 Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn;
 And when that ancient ruffian's turn was on
 He so bewitched the cards under his thumb
 That all but the one card became
 A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards,
 And that he changed into a hare.
 Hanrahan rose in frenzy there
 And followed up those baying creatures towards –
 O towards I have forgotten what – enough!
 I must recall a man that neither love
 Nor music nor an enemy's clipped ear
 Could, he was so harried, cheer;
 A figure that has grown so fabulous
 There's not a neighbour left to say
 When he finished his dog's day:
 An ancient bankrupt master of this house.
 Before that ruin came, for centuries,
 Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees
 Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs,
 And certain men-at-arms there were
 Whose images, in the Great Memory stored,
 Come with loud cry and panting breast
 To break upon a sleeper's rest
 While their great wooden dice beat on the board.
 As I would question all, come all who can;
 Come old, necessitous.  half-mounted man;
 And bring beauty's blind rambling celebrant;
 The red man the juggler sent
 Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs.  French,
 Gifted with so fine an ear;
 The man drowned in a bog's mire,
 When mocking Muses chose the country wench.
 Did all old men and women, rich and poor,
 Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door,
 Whether in public or in secret rage
 As I do now against old age?
 But I have found an answer in those eyes
 That are impatient to be gone;
 Go therefore; but leave Hanrahan,
 For I need all his mighty memories.
 Old lecher with a love on every wind,
 Bring up out of that deep considering mind
 All that you have discovered in the grave,
 For it is certain that you have
 Reckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing
 plunge, lured by a softening eye,
 Or by a touch or a sigh,
 Into the labyrinth of another's being;
 Does the imagination dwell the most
 Upon a woman won or woman lost.?
 If on the lost, admit you turned aside
 From a great labyrinth out of pride,
 Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought
 Or anything called conscience once;
 And that if memory recur, the sun's
 Under eclipse and the day blotted out.
 III
 It is time that I wrote my will;
 I choose upstanding men
 That climb the streams until
 The fountain leap, and at dawn
 Drop their cast at the side
 Of dripping stone; I declare
 They shall inherit my pride,
 The pride of people that were
 Bound neither to Cause nor to State.
 Neither to slaves that were spat on,
 Nor to the tyrants that spat,
 The people of Burke and of Grattan
 That gave, though free to refuse –
 pride, like that of the morn,
 When the headlong light is loose,
 Or that of the fabulous horn,
 Or that of the sudden shower
 When all streams are dry,
 Or that of the hour
 When the swan must fix his eye
 Upon a fading gleam,
 Float out upon a long
 Last reach of glittering stream
 And there sing his last song.
 And I declare my faith:
 I mock plotinus' thought
 And cry in plato's teeth,
 Death and life were not
 Till man made up the whole,
 Made lock, stock and barrel
 Out of his bitter soul,
 Aye, sun and moon and star, all,
 And further add to that
 That, being dead, we rise,
 Dream and so create
 Translunar paradise.
 I have prepared my peace
 With learned Italian things
 And the proud stones of Greece,
 Poet's imaginings
 And memories of love,
 Memories of the words of women,
 All those things whereof
 Man makes a superhuman,
 Mirror-resembling dream.
 As at the loophole there
 The daws chatter and scream,
 And drop twigs layer upon layer.
 When they have mounted up,
 The mother bird will rest
 On their hollow top,
 And so warm her wild nest.
 I leave both faith and pride
 To young upstanding men
 Climbing the mountain-side,
 That under bursting dawn
 They may drop a fly;
 Being of that metal made
 Till it was broken by
 This sedentary trade.
 Now shall I make my soul,
 Compelling it to study
 In a learned school
 Till the wreck of body,
 Slow decay of blood,
 Testy delirium
 Or dull decrepitude,
 Or what worse evil come –
 The death of friends, or death
 Of every brilliant eye
 That made a catch in the breath – .
 Seem but the clouds of the sky
 When the horizon fades;
 Or a bird's sleepy cry
 Among the deepening shades.