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The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats | 1920 | William Butler Yeats

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?


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: notnews; yeats

1 posted on 01/07/2009 4:40:25 AM PST by Clive
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To: Clive
circa?

Nothing-new-under-the-sun alert.

2 posted on 01/07/2009 4:44:04 AM PST by the invisib1e hand (revolution is in the air.)
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To: the invisib1e hand

Ah, 1920.


3 posted on 01/07/2009 4:44:34 AM PST by the invisib1e hand (revolution is in the air.)
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To: Clive

oh, i’ve been a fan of yeats since college.


4 posted on 01/07/2009 4:57:13 AM PST by gussiefinknottle (woof!woof!woof!)
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To: Clive

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”


5 posted on 01/07/2009 5:09:36 AM PST by SMARTY ("Stay together, pay the soldiers and forget everything else" Lucius Septimus Severus)
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To: Clive
what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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.

6 posted on 01/07/2009 5:11:56 AM PST by theDentist (Qwerty ergo typo : I type, therefore I misspelll)
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To: Clive

Personal forum????


7 posted on 01/07/2009 5:17:30 AM PST by bossmechanic (If all else fails, hit it with a hammer)
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To: Clive

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.


8 posted on 01/07/2009 5:38:11 AM PST by hellbender
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To: Clive

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.


9 posted on 01/07/2009 11:51:03 AM PST by little jeremiah (Leave illusion, come to the truth. Leave the darkness, come to the light.)
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To: Clive

bump


10 posted on 01/23/2009 1:41:54 PM PST by EveningStar (Socialism in the USA began in 1933. In 2009 it kicked into warp drive.)
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