[footnote]The second coming of Jesus Christ\u2014whom Yeats envisions here as an anti-Christ\u2014on Judgment Day.[\/footnote]\n\nTurning and turning in the widening gyre[footnote]A spiral that continues to widen until it collapses. The gyre is Yeats\u2019s symbol of a civilization spiraling out of control, at the end of its 2,000-year cycle.[\/footnote]\nThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;\nThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst\nAre full of passionate intensity.\n\nSurely some revelation is at hand;\nSurely the Second Coming is at hand.\nThe Second Coming! Hardly are those words out\nWhen a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi<\/i>[footnote]The spirit of the world.\u00a0 Similar to Carl Jung\u2019s notion of the collective unconscious, it is a storehouse of knowledge shared by all; here, knowledge of a saviour or demon.[\/footnote]\nTroubles my sight:\u00a0 somewhere in sands of the desert\nA shape with lion body and the head of a man,[footnote]The anti-Christ, similar to the Beast of the Apocalypse, described in the \u201cBook of Revelation\u201d in the Christian Bible.[\/footnote]\nA gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,\nIs moving its slow thighs, while all about it\nReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.\nThe darkness drops again; but now I know\nThat twenty centuries of stony sleep[footnote]The 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.[\/footnote]\nWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,[footnote]Wherein lay the baby Jesus.[\/footnote]\nAnd what rough beast, its hour come round at last,\nSlouches towards Bethlehem[footnote]Town in the Middle East, famous as the birthplace of Jesus.[\/footnote]\u00a0to be born?\n\n\u2014<\/b>\u00a01921<\/p>","rendered":"
[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Turning and turning in the widening gyre[2]<\/sup><\/a> Surely some revelation is at hand; \u2014<\/b>\u00a01921<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t
\nThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;
\nThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;
\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst
\nAre full of passionate intensity.<\/p>\n
\nSurely the Second Coming is at hand.
\nThe Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
\nWhen a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi<\/i>[3]<\/sup><\/a>
\nTroubles my sight:\u00a0 somewhere in sands of the desert
\nA shape with lion body and the head of a man,[4]<\/sup><\/a>
\nA gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
\nIs moving its slow thighs, while all about it
\nReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
\nThe darkness drops again; but now I know
\nThat twenty centuries of stony sleep[5]<\/sup><\/a>
\nWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,[6]<\/sup><\/a>
\nAnd what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
\nSlouches towards Bethlehem[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0to be born?<\/p>\nCandela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t