(no subject)

[violachic]

The Second Coming


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 Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the 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?

~ W.B. Yeats, 1920

Comments

[catdraco.livejournal.com]

I love that poem. Thanks for posting it.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

I love that.

[e-morgan.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of "The Stand".

[splagxna.livejournal.com]

i adore that poem.

[fille-de-livre.livejournal.com]

i love that poem. One of my favorite novels references it.

[brotherskeeper1.livejournal.com]

I greatly enjoyed this poem. Please post more.

[unhipster.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite poems.

[sabotabby]

Chiming in with the Yeats love.