Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE SECOND COMING, by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS Recitation by Author Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Turning and turning in the widening gyre Last Line: Slouches towards bethlehem to be born? Alternate Author Name(s): Yeats, W. B. Subject(s): Bible; Birds; Chaos; Easter; History; Holidays; Imagination; Judgment Day; Men; Millenium; Religion; Vision; War; The Resurrection; Historians; Fancy; End Of The World; Doomsday; Fall Of Man; Theology | ||||||||
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? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MYSTIC BOUNCE by TERRANCE HAYES MATHEMATICS CONSIDERED AS A VICE by ANTHONY HECHT UNHOLY SONNET 11 by MARK JARMAN SHINE, PERISHING REPUBLIC by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE COMING OF THE PLAGUE by WELDON KEES A LITHUANIAN ELEGY by ROBERT KELLY SIXTEEN DEAD MEN by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS |
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