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

everywhereThe 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

outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of

theDesert.

Turning around in a spiral that keepsgetting 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 berevealed. 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.