Posted on 01/07/2009 4:40:24 AM PST by Clive
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 around 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?
Nothing-new-under-the-sun alert.
Ah, 1920.
oh, i’ve been a fan of yeats since college.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
First time I recall the line was reading "The Stand". It was intriguing enough to make me look it up and read the whole stanza.
Personal forum????
I think it was way back in the 60s that National Review turned me on to this poem. It was uncannily relevant then and even more so now. It was written about the decline of the West early in the 20th century, when the symptoms were already apparent.
WBY bookmark.
I used to read his poetry a lot when I was young. Wish I had a book of it now. I think he was a follower of Swedenborg, IIRC.
bump
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