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.

-William Butler Yeats

The sixty-one year old Yeats is writing about his desire, in his old age, to leave behind the natural, bodily, sensual delights and values of youth–”the young in one another’s arms,” the “mackerel-crowded seas”–for the “artifice of eternity,” the “monuments of unageing intellect.” Byzantium is his city of the mind, where tender and mutable flesh is shed for the glittering, imperishable gold of artistic creation and intellectual achievement. When his body begins to break down, when he begins to become “a tattered coat upon a stick,” a scarecrow to frighten the young and impetuous, he pleads to be reborn. His heart, “fastened to a dying animal,” is no good to him anymore: he must be exchanged for a golden bird, a clockwork imitation of the natural world that transcends it. He will speak timeless truths from a vantage point that is beyond time.

I love this poem, though I feel as though I’m looking at it curiously, from across a broad gulf. It’s not just that I’m really young, it’s that I’m really into being young at this point: the new love and big plans and nice legs and stupid mistake parts of it. And with this awareness–”wow, it’s really fun being young, actually”–comes the insidious realization that it won’t last forever. I’ve always known that I was going to die, even though the young aren’t supposed to know that. Somehow, though, it’s never occurred to me that I would get old first.

So I like this poem. I like the idea of the old and worn-out body becoming a chrysalis for something altogether new and more splendid. I like the idea that we can transmute ourselves into a pure artistry, that we can transcend what is flesh. Flesh is lovely. Being young is lovely. But this poem speaks to me of something even better–something eternal–and whether that’s religion or art, I’m not sure and I don’t think Yeats is either. As we retreat from our failing bodies, we enter into a deeper knowledge, and we discover that what we have lost is far less than what we have won.

That’s the hope, anyway.