100 Selected Poems, W. B. Yeats: Collectable Hardbound Edition

by W.B. Yeats

I see my life go drifting like a river From change to change; I have been many things

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 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?

Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned By those that are not entirely beautiful;

That is no country for old men.

How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

No man has ever lived that had enough Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.

Things said or done long years ago, Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.

A brief parting from those dear Is the worst man has to fear.