As some refer to 2024 as Trump's "Second Coming", I submit that Yeats was a prescient genius.

[Atticus]

"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?"

[leftieNanner]

1. Oh Lordy!

"... and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun..."

Perfect description.

Thanks for sharing this Atticus.

[cilla4progress]

2. Prescient indeed...

So chilling. Always gets me.

When did Yeats write this? What was going on in the world at the time?

[Atticus]

3. He wrote this in 1919, just after WW I had ended. I believe he may have felt that mankind

would surely end in the near future --- or maybe he just foresaw Trump.

[cilla4progress]

5. I figured it was during a hellish event -

World War.

And he ain't wrong! About it coming back..

[Scrivener7]

6. One of the best images ever.

[Basic LA]

7. The lines that always get me:

The best lack all conviction,
while the worst
Are full of passionate
intensity.

[Achilleaze]

8. Surely some treason is at hand

and what rough repuglicans, their lying stank come round at last,
slouch toward Merde-a-Lardo to further betray their oafs of orifice.