Upsoaring wings: A tattered coat upon a stick

William Butler Yeats wrote “Sailing to Byzantium” in 1928, when he was 60; he was exploring the experience of growing old. “An aged man is but a paltry thing.” Hard truth, to be sure. Yeats figuratively consults the sages of ancient Byzantium—the seat of the Eastern Church—on how to reconcile the old body/soul human dilemma.

These days men are more likely to turn to cosmetic surgeons and investment bankers than gold-mosaiced lords and ladies of a former empire when confronting their age, but this is still worth consideration.

“Sailing to Byzantium”

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.