The Second Coming

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Tony.Williams
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Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2016 8:05 am
Location: Still somewhere in England
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The Second Coming

Post by Tony.Williams »

A line from a poem was niggling at my memory, so I immediately tracked it down (one of the things the internet is best for, IMO) and found it in a 1919 poem by W B Yeats. I though the poem worth repeating in full here (the line I recalled is emphasised), as it seems rather appropriate in the light of current events:
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?
chaggle
Posts: 2801
Joined: Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:01 am

Re: The Second Coming

Post by chaggle »

:???:

Worryingly apposite.
Don't blame me - I voted remain :con
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