| 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? |