Tuesday 30 September 2008

Which reminds me...


















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 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?

(W.B. Yeats, 1920)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My absolute favourite - apocalyptic poetry and First World War poetry is what it's all about. None of that romance nonsense.
And faeries are good too.

Chertiozhnik said...

Also, smoke a cool cigarette. My motto when the going gets tough, which it usually has.

Anonymous said...

I've always loved that poem, though like most people I can only quote a couple of lines