The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats 1865 (Sandymount) – 1939 (Menton)
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 i{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?
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 49 sec read
- 1,459 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABCADEFGGHFIJKLMNOPQR |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 913 |
Words | 166 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 22 |
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