The Second Coming
W. B. 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?
Personal Notes:
07-17-2025
I first encountered this poem in high school, for an AP Lit assignment. tbh I saw "Yeats", thought "huh, looks like yeet lol" and ever since then this has been my favorite poem. I love WWI art, the chaotic modernism. Rite of Spring is one of my favorite symphonic works and my first year in marching band I marched Firebird. Maybe I'm just a girl who gets too silly, but whenever I engage with the confusion and turmoil of those men in the trenches, it feels like home (she said typing from her peaceful home on her laptop). But it's just the way that my depression manifests, the hopelessness and the feeling lost. Something is wrong with the world, everything is going wrong, I look towards the future and see nothing but worse tides marching closer.
But their war was the Great War, the War to end all Wars, and I call it World War One. They were right to be scared, many of those poets died, but their war was soon dwarfed in scale. And I am still here. We, as a species will sill be here after the next one, too. It's a strange sort of catharsis. It feels as if they know all there is to know about me, except that I know things from the future.
Also, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre" is just such a good phrase. I love it. I'm still new to poetry, and I can't give informed critique, but that's just good craft, isn't it?