The Second Coming - William Butler Yeats poem

Poetry reading of The Second Coming (1919) by W.B. Yeats.
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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?

The Second Coming - written by W.B. Yeats
Narrated by Jordan Harling

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Author image:

By Alice Boughton (Whyte's) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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[BrainheartMan]

Even truer today than it was when Yeats wrote it! Thank you for posting this!

[sathyabhamadaly]

The lines that resonate for me are: "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" (The Second Coming. W.B. Yeats Seven Centuries of Poetry in English. Ed. John Leonard).

[OLBK]

That was a very lovely reading. The best one I have heard of the piece. Thank you and God Bless

[geoc]

That first stanza sounds like it was written for today as a creeping, profoundly malevolent totalitarianism infects our world.

[innertubez]

I thought this poem was relevant back in the late 1980s when I first read it. And it was. But it seems even more fitting in today's chaotic world. Thank you for reading it with such soul as opposed to the terrible AI-generated versions!

[RachaelReads-xohl]

Came to YouTube to find this. Subscribed ❤️🔔, liked 👍, and commenting 💬 for the algorithm.

[kennethgutman]

There is an uncanny relevance of Yeats' The Second Coming to this very time, the 2nd election of Trump to the U.S. Presidency, though it was written over a hundred years ago.

[radiophodity]

0:30
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Dunning-Krueger

[garymeadows]

Wordsworth: Ode on Intimations of Immortality.

[thestandingoak]

We, the falcon, really have lost sight of our Falconer. High time we listened for his call and return to his steady arm and guidance.

[pilarolabarria]

Every word resonates todays political world.

[goodnightvienna]

Cormac McCarthy brought me here - specifically the character of Anton Chigurgh

[krishankumarsuthar]

From which country do you belong? please tell me. I am from India.

[boxfox]

Bring the chaos, tear the center apart, to rain down. Burying' all it beholds.

[stephensollnersawyer]

Here comes Marvin the paranoid robot.slouching toward Bethlehem

[BruceJackson-lxdw]

The first paragraph is a prophetic vision of 2024 England, which had degenerated and lost its way spiritually. A vociferous strident and self righteous minority dictates & demands the relatively silent majority to change and conform to new norms -such as redefining marriage/man/woman. It is all too sad: a perversion and malignant mutation of our once Green and Pleasant Land. If we cannot rescue ourselves, will King Arthur return as ancient myth promises ?

[salahdin]

Beth lehem, 2nd coming, Jesus, Jerusalem, is coming to fight against the oppressors.