William Butler Yeats(1865–1939)

Byzantium

The unpurged images of day recede;

The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;

Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song

After great cathedral gong;

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains6

All that man is,

All mere complexities,

The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,

Shade more than man, more image than a shade;

For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth

May unwind the winding path;7

A mouth that has no moisture and no breath

Breathless mouths may summon;8

I hail the superhuman;

I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,

More miracle than bird or handiwork,

Planted on the starlit golden bough,

Can like the cocks of Hades crow,9

Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud

In glory of changeless metal

Common bird or petal

And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit

Flames that no faggot1 feeds, nor steel has lit,

Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,

Where blood-begotten spirits come

And all complexities of fury leave,

Dying into a dance,

An agony of trance,

An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

street corners where the soul is purified, birds of describe the figure, wrapped in a winding-sheet or

hammered gold singing in the golden trees, in the mummy-cloth, but it also conveys the idea that the

harbor [dolphins], offering their backs to the wail- soul may unwind the thread of its fate by retracing

ing dead that they may carry them to Paradise. its path, returning to the world to serve as guide,

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,

Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood.

The golden smithies of the Emperor!

Marbles of the dancing floor

Break bitter furies of complexity,

Those images that yet

Fresh images beget,

That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

September 19301932