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 i{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?
  
  - w.b. yeats