— 
 
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

— 
 
There is another sky,Ever serene and fair,And there is another sunshine,Though it be darkness there;Never mind faded forests, Austin,Never mind silent fields -Here is a little forest,Whose leaf is ever green;Here is a brighter garden,Where not a frost has been;In its unfading flowersI hear the bright bee…

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.

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.

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.

—
 
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…

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 a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
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
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

—

Now, what shall we call this new sort of gazing-house
that has opened in our town where people sit
quietly and pour out their glancing
like light, like answering?

No need to wait until we die!
There’s more to want here than money
and being famous and bites of roasted meat.

Beat the drum and let the poets speak.
This is the day of purification for those who
are already mature and initiated into what love is.

And don’t look for me in human shape.
I am inside your looking. No room
for form with love this strong.

Those get ripped open and washed away
in the music of our final meeting.

So don’t fuss with the shroud
and the graveyard road dust.

This heart-tumult is my signal
to you igniting in the tomb.

That night, when you escape your fear of snakebite
and all irritations with the ants, you’ll hear
my familiar voice, see the candle being lit,
smell the incense, the surprise meal fixed
by the lover inside all your other lovers.

I am the clear consciousness-core
of your being, the same in
ecstasy as in self-hating fatigue.

—