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Please
see also "Christ as The Man of Sorrows" in the Photo
Album - individual photos section.
The
Second Coming
By
W.B. Yeats .
Turning
and turning in the widening gyre
The
falcon can no longer hear the falconer;
Things
fall apart, the centre cannot hold;
Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The
blood tinted 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 these 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,
Having
a gaze bland and pitiless as the sun,
Is
moving it's slow thighs, while all about it
Red
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, it's hour come round at last,
Slouches
toward Bethlehem to be born?
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