2.1.3.4: The Second Coming

Compact Anthology of World Literature - 4, 5, and 6 · LibreTexts

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    The Second Coming

    The Second Coming License: Public Domain W.B. Yeats

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Things fall apart; the centre 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

    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

    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 Bethlehem to be born?

    This page titled 2.1.3.4: The Second Coming was last modified on Mon, 01 Feb 2021 04:27:55 GMT and is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Anita Turlington, Matthew Horton, Karen Dodson, Laura Getty, Kyounghye Kwon, Georgia, and Laura Ng (GALILEO Open Learning Materials) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.