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?





