THE SECOND COMING
[written in 1920]
William butler Yeats, (1865-1939)
Turning
and turning in the widening gyre
The
falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things
fall apart: the center cannot hold;
Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The
blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The
ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The
best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are
full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The
Second Coming! Hardly are those words
out
When
a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
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
Reel
shadows of the indignant desert birds.
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