This seems like a good time to post Yeats' haunting, prescient poem, The Second Coming.

[Ocelot II]

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: 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?

[elleng]

1. The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

[Solly Mack]

2. ...

[lapucelle]

3. Thanks for this post.

I can't count the number of times that the line "the center cannot hold" has popped into my mind the last few months.

[moniss]

4. Lou Reed used to quote the last 2 lines

of the first verse before performing. At least I know of one instance and that is before "Sweet Jane" on the live album "Take No Prisoners". Incredible performance also.

[ancianita]

5. You beat me to it. Thanks.

I was just reading that last night. But it seemed too dark when we're trying to find a way forward.

I do love that most famous of poems, though.

[KT2000]

6. In the bleak midwinter

I almost had it all
Tommy Shelby

[Hugin]

7. K&R for relevant poetry. n/t

[XanaDUer2]

8. English major

This poem keeps coming into my mind