The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
1865 to 1939
Track 1
Reconstruct the poem by dragging each line into its correct position. Your goal is to reassemble the original poem as accurately as possible. As you move the lines, you'll see whether your arrangement is correct, helping you explore the poem's flow and meaning. You can also print out the jumbled poem to cut up and reassemble in the classroom. Either way, take your time, enjoy the process, and discover how the poet's words come together to create something truly beautiful.
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The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;