The second coming
W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” was written in 1919 and first published in November 1920 in the US magazines “The Nation” and “The Dial”. It was subsequently included in Yeats’ 1921 collection of verse “Michael Robartes and the Dancer”.
William Butler Yeats was born on 13 June 1865 in Sandymount, Ireland, and he died on 28 January 1939 in Menton, France, at the age of 73.A poet, dramatist, and writer, Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish literary revival and became a pillar of the Irish literary establishment, helping to found the Abbey Theatre. In his later years, he served two terms as a senator of the Irish Free State.
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Wikipedia page on “The second coming”
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Wikipedia page on William Butler Yeats
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?