Lyric Poem · Life

The Second Coming

by W. B. Yeats · 1920

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: a waste of desert sand;

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

Wind 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?

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“The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats — quilloak.com/poems/the-second-coming

Quick facts

Poem: The Second Coming
Poet: W. B. Yeats
Published: 1920
Length: 22 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Life, Power & Hubris, War & Remembrance

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 22 lines · 2 stanzas of 8–14 lines
Line length: Lines run 10-11 syllables (median 10), consistent with pentameter. No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the cited edition and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record: W. B. Yeats1865–1939
Source record: WikisourceThe Second Coming by william-butler-yeats, Wikisource transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: 1920
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 7a6a944e88f48154…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.