August 22, 2011

From Gerald R. Lucas
The Second Coming[1]
By: W. B. Yeats (1919)

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 5
The ceremony of innocence[2] is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.[3]

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 10
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi[4]
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 15
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind 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,[5] 20
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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notes

  1. ↑ This poem expresses Yeats’ idea that civilization is cyclical, and that each age, or “gyre” of history, is followed by another turn or spiral.
  2. ↑ Ritual, in Yeats’ view, is the foundation of civilization.
  3. ↑ Yeats had the Russian Revolution in mind in lines 4–8, yet they resonate today, as well.
  4. ↑ The spirit of the universe. Yeats believed that all souls were connected through this great memory. It is also the source of inspiration for the poet.
  5. ↑ This is the cradle of the newborn Jesus Christ.
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