| Wheeled a flight of Dryads Murmuring in measured melody. Gyre in gyre their treading was;... Wheeling with an adverse flight, In twi-circle o'er the grass, These to the left, and those to the right; All the band linked by each other's hand;... There was the clash of their cymbals clanging... Whereat they broke to the left and to the right,... Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point Over the covert where Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her!... The stranded moon lay quivering like a lustrous Medusa newly washed up from the tide... But where day's glance turns baffled from the deeps, Die out those lovely swarms; And in the immense profound no creature glides or creeps And through my hazes of pain and fear thine yes: young wonder shone Then, as flies scatter from carrion, Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke, Fled, at thy counternance, all that doubting spawn: The heart which I questioned spoke A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn,- 'I take the omen of this face of dawn;... As an Arab journeyth Through the sand of Ayaman, Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue, Lagging by his side along; And a rusty-winged Death Grating its low flight before, Casting ribbed shadows o'er The blank desert, blank and tan: He lifts by hap toward where the morning's roots are His weary stare,- See's although they plashless mutes are... While with unblinking glare The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her Such a watered dream has tarried Trembling on my desert arid; Even so Its lovely gleemings Seemings show Of things not seemings;... And murmurous still of its nativity... Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek On the burning brow of the sick earth Sick with death, and sick with birth, Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled,... As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine Moves all the labouring surges of the world... And Awe was reigned in awe, At one small house of Nazareth; And Golgotha... Force were not force, would spill itself in vain; We know the Titan by his champed [bitten] chain, Stay is heat's cradle, it is rocked therein... And though he cherisheth. The babe most strangely born from out her death, Some tender trick of her hath maybe;- It is not she!... What if the old fastidious sculture, Time, This crescent marvel of his hands Carveth all too painfully... Why should amazement be our satellite? What wonder in such things? If angels have hereditary wings,... But who can wind the horn of might Open for him shall roll the conscious gate And light leap up from the torches there, And life leap up from every torchbearer And stone faces kindle in the glow And into the blank eyes the irids grow Go Sister-songs, to that sweet-pair For whome I have your frail limbs fashioned, And framed featously,- |
| 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 some 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 the sands of the desert A shape with a lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitless as the sun, Is moving is 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 toward's Bethlehem to be born? |
| Sister Songs |
| Second Coming |
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