The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

Bumped back to the top.  I was trying to think of something to write about the election until I remembered that I already said what I wanted to say back in January.  I’ll merely add that the number of voters who can’t tell the difference between a fireman and an arsonist only increases.

Here is my comment on the 2010 midterms:

THE SECOND COMING

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 the 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?

– William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

One thought on “The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

  1. Sooo, the rough beast is the Congress after the 2010 elections.
    The falconer is Obama
    The falcon is the American people.

    The chimera is….uh…Sarah Palin?
    and the desert birds…ummm…the Tea Party?

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