Byzantium - In The Nursery

The unpurged images of day recedes;

The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;

Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song

After great cathedral gong;

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains

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;

A mouth that has no moisture and no breath

Breathless mouths may summon;

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 star-lit golden bough

Can like the cocks of Hades crow

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 faggot 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

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