The Second Coming- William Butler Yeats

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 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?

I remember reading The Second Coming during my junior year of high school. We dissected the poem within the context of the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. For some reason I very much enjoy the poem. I remember it was written during the aftermath of WWI.

My favorite line I think is:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
^^ I find this to be true in many ways, I know many people who are either ignorantly, yet entirely devoted to one belief, or have no convictions whatsoever.

I think this poem highlights a lot about human nature.

Once we as humans have experienced something extreme or dramatic it haunts us, we become wild in some ways i.e. the falcon cannot hear the falconer: This somewhat reminds me of how often times when soldiers are sent to war when they return they are haunted by the experiences which they had yet they long to return to it. The intensity cannot be matched by everyday life for them, they have had a taste of something which they cannot forget.
Once things are set into motion they cannot be stopped, i.e. the center cannot hold.