Byzantium Songtext
von In the Nursery

The unpurged images of the day recede
The Emperor′s drunken soldiery are abed
Night-resonance receives night-walkers' song
After the great cathedral gong
A star-lit or a moon-lit dome disdains
All that man is, all mere complexities
And 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 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
And midnight on the Emperor′s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds nor stealers lit
Nor storm disturbs, flame 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 dolphins 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