![Bible - Pure Cambridge Edition of 1611 [Pre Westcott and Hort Alterations]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpBXGz8HUlzTpBWQq6JQeoOuqGvZkrXzKVJmYLG-wg0e-kwe7QfaTg7WsEdiiOGU5cQ-xrjyobbeyd_VK2x05VATm_K5Hw96Dz4WmjSyRZAGGkZKX5-gOEknAsaADx-ibDYpNV0MUvsnk/s263/B.jpg)
T H E
s e c o n d c o m i n g
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
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?
L I N K S
