W. B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre Meaning: The world is shown spinning farther and farther out of control.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Meaning: The falcon has lost touch with the one who guided it.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Meaning: Order is collapsing.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, Meaning: Chaos is released across the earth.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere Meaning: Violence spreads like a dark flood.
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; Meaning: Innocence is overwhelmed and destroyed.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Meaning: Good people seem uncertain.
Are full of passionate intensity. Meaning: Meanwhile the worst people act with fierce confidence.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Meaning: The speaker expects some revelation to follow this disorder.
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. Meaning: The thought of a Second Coming feels close.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out Meaning: But the expected holy image changes at once.
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Meaning: A vast figure rises from the shared human imagination.
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert Meaning: That vision disturbs the speaker deeply.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man, Meaning: The creature appears in a desert landscape.
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Meaning: It combines animal force with human shape.
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Meaning: Its stare is empty and merciless.
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. Meaning: It moves heavily and slowly.
The darkness drops again; but now I know Meaning: The desert birds circle in angry shadows around it.
That twenty centuries of stony sleep Meaning: Then the vision fades back into darkness.
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, Meaning: But the speaker now understands something terrible.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Meaning: A long historical sleep has been broken.
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Meaning: Even the image of a cradle becomes frightening.