The Second Coming By W. B Yeats
Vocabulary gyre: a spiral turn falcon: a bird of prey falconer: a person who trains falcons to capture prey mere: total, absolute anarchy: total chaos and war dimmed: made darker loosed: unleashed conviction: deep belief in something, such as morals revelation: a great realization Second Coming: return of Jesus vast: huge Spiritus Mundi: the shared spirit or soul of all people
pitiless: without sympathy reel: whirl around indignant: upset vexed: distressed rough: harsh, crude slouches: walks slowly, awkwardly, slumped over Bethlehem: town where Jesus was born
Turning and turning in the widening gyre, The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart, the center 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 the sands of the Desert. Turning around in a spiral that keeps getting wider, the falcon cannot hear his trainer. Things fall apart. Total chaos and rebellion spill into the world. A tidal wave of blood drowns everything innocent. The best people no longer believe in anything, and the worst are extremely passionate about their beliefs, even if they are wrong. Surely some kind of great truth will be revealed. Surely Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the Second Coming! As soon as I say this, I see a huge image, which everyone on Earth can also see, and it troubles me.
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? Somewhere in the sands of the desert, a beast with a lion’s body and a man’s face— with an empty, unsympathetic look in its eyes, is slowly getting up and walking, while angry vultures circle it, out of control. Darkness falls again. But now I know that this beast, which has been sound asleep like a statue for 2,000 years, has been woken up, and a nightmare is going to start. What is this harsh, crude beast? It walks menacingly towards Bethlehem, where it will be born.
William Butler Yeats is buried in the Protestant churchyard, Drumcliff, Co. Sligo, Ireland. Yeats' Grave at Drumcliff. Yeats was born in Dublin into an artistic family.