The Sed ing
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The fal ot hear the faler;
Things fall apart; the tre ot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innoce is drowned;
The best lack all vi, while the worst
Are full of passioensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Sed ing is at hand.
The Sed ing! 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 indigna birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty turies of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rog cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour e round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?