W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming:
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?
