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. Take your time, enjoy the process, and discover how the poet's words come together to create something truly beautiful.
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A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The darkness drops again; but now I know
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
Are full of passionate intensity.
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
Turning and turning in the widening gyre