8 Etudes on W.B. Yeats' SECOND COMING

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8 Etudes on W.B. Yeats' SECOND COMING #1

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

8 Etudes on W.B. Yeats' SECOND COMING #2
© Sam H. Shirakawa, 2016

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

8 Etudes on W.B. Yeats' SECOND COMING #3
© Sam H. Shirakawa,2016

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.

8 Etudes on W.B. Yeats' SECOND COMING #4
© Sam H. Shirakawa. 2016

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

8 Etudes on W.B. Yeats' SECOND COMING #5

© Sam H. Shirakawa. 2016

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
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.