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?