THE SECOND COMING
          Turning and turning in the widening gyre
          The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
          Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
          Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
          The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
          The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
          The best lack all conviction, while the worst
          Are full of passionate intensity.

          Surely some revelation is at hand;
          Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
          The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
          When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
          Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
          A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
          A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
          Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
          Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
          The darkness drops again; but now I know
          That twenty centuries of stony sleep
          Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
          And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
          Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
          WHEN YOU ARE OLD
          When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
          And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
          And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
          Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

          How many loved your moments of glad grace,
          And loved your beauty with love false or true,
          But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
          And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

          And bending down beside the glowing bars,
          Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
          And paced upon the mountains over head
          And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
          THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE
          I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
          And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
          Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
          And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

          And I shall have some peace there, for peoce comes dropping slow,
          Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
          There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
          And evening full of the linnet's wings.

          I will arise and go now, for always night and day
          I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
          While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
          I hear it in the deep heart's core.
          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.
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.
III
          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.
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.
          HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN
          Had I the heavens' enbroidered cloths,
          Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
          The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
          Of night and light and the half-light,
          I would spread the cloths under your feet:
          But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
          I have spread my dreams under you feet;
          Tread softly because you dread on my dreams.
          NO SECOND TROY
          Why should I blame her that she filled my days
          With misery, or that she would of late
          Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
          Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
          Had they but courage equal to desire?
          What could have made her peaceful with a mind
          That nobleness made simple as a fire,
          With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
          That is not natural in an age like this,
          Being high and solitary and most stern?
          Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
          Was there another Troy for her to burn?

          THE GREAT DAY
          Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
          A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
          Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
          The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
          THE FASCINATION OF WHAT'S DIFFICULT
          The fascination of what's difficult
          Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
          Spontaneous joy and natural content
          Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt
          That must, as if it had not holy blood
          Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
          Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
          As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays
          That have to be set up in fifty ways,
          On the day's war with every knave and dolt,
          Theatre business, management of men.
          I swear before the dawn comes round again
          I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.
          LONG-LEGGED FLY
          That civilisation may not sink,
          Its great battle lost,
          Quiet the dog, tether the pony
          To a distant post;
          Our master Caesar is in the tent
          Where the maps are spread,
          His eyes fixed on nothing,
          A hand under his head.
          Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
          His mind moves upon silence.

          That the topless towers be burnt
          And men recall that face,
          MOve most gently if move you must
          In this lonely place.
          She thinks, jpart woman, three parts a child,
          That nobody looks; her feet
          Practise a tinker shuffle
          Picked up on a street.
          Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
          Her mind moves upon silence.

          That girls at puberty may find
          The first Adam in their thought,
          Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
          Keep those children out.
          There on that scaffolding reclines
          MichaelAngelo.
          With no more sound than the mice make
          His hand moves to and fro.
          Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
          His mind moves upon silence.