Byzantium
By William Butler Yeats

The unpurged images of day recede;
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 starlit golden bough,
Can like the fluffs 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 fluff 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.

:) thanks for posting getafix! Now it's occuring to me that ive had you post it once before for me, so thanks again :p

I have never understood poetry, sounds like this guy is on an acid trip with his golden birds and death shadows.

This ought to be helpful ... http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/yeats/section8.rhtml

Thanks Nerrus! I thought it went well with "Aphrodite" too. It also turned out to match up with the countries Opium and Orderly Pandemonium, though that wasn't intentional.

Also Vic, I don't remember posting this before.. I was answering your ingame question about whether I was interested in Byzantine history, which I'm not particularly, I just like the name "Byzantium". But then I read the poem a few times and I thought it was pretty good. And it came second.

interesting getafix!

Same author of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Glnz2buVU.

Great movie btw.

This is about all we can expect from illiterate essayists :(

I get the sunset, dreams, stars and sunrise.

@ Getafix : Indeed good sir. Which poem came in first? Don't go to hard on the illiterate essayists, to each his own is beautiful.

@ Celphi : Love the movie, but loved the poem more. If only the world could be nicer.

@ DruncK : You're not drunk enough.

How true. The arrogance of it! Illiterate Essayists.. perhaps i should try to bring them back next week and see if they've learned anything.

@ Nerrus: It's my fav poem. That's how I remembered the movie, lol. WB Yeats!!

Thats great Celphi, Byzantium wins best poem of the week award then. Very topical scene with Sean Bean in Equilibrium, great movie. I've been watching him in season 1 of the Game of Thrones all week too.

Butttman, I like your Illiterate Essayists, the futility of their short and brutal lives, the sadness of their destiny, to return again and again to suffer under communiist regimes, printing their seditious and illiterate samizdat on scraps of paper, attempting to learn, to achieve enlightenment, to pass their scratchy scrawlings to the next generation as they die, week after week, to be reborn to a dwindling world taken over by bots :(

2 + 2 = 5