In "Sailing to Byzantium, Yeats, cognizant of his impending death, muses on what really lasts. In order to figure that out, he leaves what is "no country for old men" (1), a place where "caught in that sensual music all neglect / Monuments of unageing intellect" (7-8). The enjambment which carries line seven into eight underlines how these people are "caught" up in sensual music; that is, they don't have time to pause and explore the intellectual feats that Yeats believes actually last. In seven and eight, he rhymes "neglect" with "intellect" in order to further highlight this.
So he's going to Byzantium, an ancient cultural center, and begs some "sages" to "gather me / into the artifice of eternity" (15-16), again stressing that eternity is artificial, literally made by man. And to further the point he rhymes "me" with "eternity."
In the last stanza, he recognizes that he can't take anything from this life to the next. Rather he'll leave behind " such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make" (27) which have lasted, if not through eternity, beyond two millennia. In the last line, he stresses only "past," "pass" in "passing" and "come," because as far as Yeats is concerned, if something doesn't last, it doesn't matter.
-Conor
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