Round of 16 · Region IV: Nature & Existence · Matchup 8

"The Second Coming"

W.B. Yeats, 1919

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"The Second Coming"

W.B. 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?

QUESTION 1 / 5
AP Literature · Close Reading
Quiz Complete
5 / 5
100% · PERFECT SCORE

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"The Second Coming"
W.B. Yeats · 5/5 · 100%

Matchup 8: Frost vs. Yeats
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